


Other Alternate Realities

by shoelesscountess



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/F, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:46:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 47,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22401274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shoelesscountess/pseuds/shoelesscountess
Summary: Betty and Veronica through the years.
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Veronica Lodge
Comments: 17
Kudos: 49





	1. Winning, relatively

_**2014** _

Betty was floating. At least that’s how it felt—a sense of weightlessness, some zero gravity shit, like she’d been cast adrift in outer space. She’d skipped lunch amongst all the preparation (all the girls but Veronica had) and only managed an orange and coffee for breakfast. This, combined with the fact that Betty was having trouble breathing, was likely the reason why she was so lightheaded and increasingly certain that she might be able to float away, if only her mother would let her go.

“Deep breath in, Betty. Come on darlin’, work with me here. I’ve nearly got it done all the way up.”

Betty obliged and breathed in. The corset tightened incrementally, and her ribs ached.

“You’re hurting me, Mom,” she complained, shifting in her seat as she studied her reflection in the vanity mirror. Unsurprisingly, she barely recognised herself, which was kinda of the point. Betty had been transformed into the famous Mary Queen of Scots with the help of a little (lot) of white foundation and some very dramatic touches, including a positively excessive amount of blush, and an auburn wig. The wig itched where it touched her bare skin, adding to her already considerable discomfort. “And I don’t feel well.”

“We’re nearly there, Betty,” Alice Cooper sounded as breathless and irate as Betty felt. “Just a couple more laces and then we’re all done.”

Betty’s mom favoured collective pronouns when discussing any activity associated with a pageant. _We’ve got to do this. Just one outfit change and we’re done. We just might have this, sweetie._ In many ways, it made perfect sense. When it came to the Cooper family, pageants were a collective effort. Alice Cooper would tell Betty what to do and say. She’d explain in detail how her daughter ought to act, how to blink and blush coquettishly, and pause thoughtfully before an answer. She was the driving force behind their success and Betty was, for the most part, a willing participant—the daughter who gave form to her mother’s dreams.

“We need another breath, honey.”

Yet there were times when the collective pronouns rankled Betty. Times like these. Times when her mother was asking difficult and awfully uncomfortable things of her body. High heels that she could barely walk in. Swimsuits that cut into her skin. Itchy wigs. Corsets that made her feel like she was floating, for heaven’s sake.

“I can’t play if I can’t move, Mom.”

“You can always play, Betty. Lord knows nothing’s stopped you before.”

Betty had nothing to say to that. It was, after all, the truth. Nothing had stopped her playing before. Even now, perched on this stool with her scalp itching and her mother cutting off her air supply, Betty was thinking about her guitar, craving it holding it in her hands and running the calloused pads of her fingers across the strings. It was one of the few things that made the pageants bearable.

Outside the dressing room where Alice fussed over Betty, contestants accompanied by their mothers roamed the Riverdale High school hall, which had been rented and furnished for the pageant. Whomever had decorated the hall had tried their best to give the impression of sophistication—think strategically placed ribbons and bouquets of fresh flowers—but of course the modest budget and small-town chic shone through despite their efforts, be it the cluster of multi-coloured, mismatched plastic chairs positioned below the stage, the tattered stage curtains, or the floor scuffed and streaked by the tread of countless feet. None of this was helped by the dense smell of dust and rubber, coupled with a faintly musty odour; Betty hastened a guess that there was mould growing in the interior of the ancient roof, which sagged dispiritedly in certain spots, surely in need of replacement. All in all, it was a Riverdale as you could possibly get.

“C’mon, Betty. One. More. Breath.” In the dressing room, Alice punctuated each word with an effectual tug at the laces of Betty’s corset, drawing her daughter’s attention back to the unpleasant task at hand. Her mother’s words were edged in steel and this was how Betty knew that Alice Cooper was losing her patience, rapidly.

“Okay,” she murmured quietly after a pause and followed her mother’s directions to—

“Breathe as deep as you can on the count of three. One! Two! Breathe!”

Betty breathed in and the world at the periphery of her vision grew dark, just for a moment, a gathering of shadows in the corners of her eyes. _Surely not a good sign,_ she thought to herself woozily, _surely a very bad sign._

“And we have it!” Alice cried in delight, tied the last knot with a firm and final tug, and clapped her hands, wilfully ignorant to her daughter’s discomfort. “Oh darling,” she exclaimed, an ecstatic expression taking shape on her face. “You look gorgeously authentic. The judges aren’t gonna know what’s hit em’ when they see you and hear you play.”

“You don’t think it’s too much?” Betty asked anxiously, her hands moving across her narrowed waist, her eyes drawn to the reflection of her much too pale face, eyes wide and startled. She still felt lightheaded, like the world might slip away from her at any given moment.

“Too much?” Alice’s reflection brow knitted in confusion, as if her daughter were speaking in an entirely different language. Betty’s mother was wearing her ivory blouse and powder blue blazer, the two most expensive items of clothing she owned, paired with her grandmother’s jewellery. Alice had purchased the blouse and blazer for events such as these, for occasions when she wanted to pretend she wasn’t a middle class mother on the cusp of slipping further down the rungs of the class hierarchy.

Recent times had been unkind to the Cooper family. The family-run pharmacy had never quite recovered from the GFC, had in fact been teetering on the threshold of economic viability ever since the stock market crashed and burned, taking the American Dream™ with it. Since then, Betty had learned the hard way that financial instability did weird things to people. It had hardened her mother and spawned a desperation in her Betty had never seen before, a need to convince everyone that everything was just fine. The pageants were part of that, Betty understood, as was the expensive blouse and blazer. It was textbook overcompensation. A testament to her strength of will. A mark of her incredible stubbornness. When the chips were down, Alice smiled wider, laughed harder and wore her baby blue blazer and ivory blouse like chain mail. With her _fuck-you_ ensemble on, Alice Cooper walked into battles largely of her own making, her chest puffed out, shoulders squared, and chin tipped defiantly to the sky.

She was so formidable in public, and conversely, so awfully diminished behind closed doors. Betty didn’t pretend to understand it. Maybe she didn’t want to.

“You don’t think it’s too, I dunno…,” Betty tucked a rogue blonde lock into her auburn wig, her fingers trembling slightly, “…dramatic?”

“Sweetie, please…” Alice made no effort to hide her incredulity. “What are we here for, if not for drama?”

Betty was too tired to argue anymore. She let her mother fuss over her until one of the pageant volunteers escorted her out of the dressing room, warning her tersely that mothers were not allowed to be backstage when the performances started. To Betty’s immense relief, Alice acquiesced after a brief protest.

“You’re gonna be great, honey!” she called as she departed. “Don’t forget to sit up straight!”

 _As if I have any other option,_ Betty thought as she watched her mother disappear from sight, _as if you haven’t just trussed me within an inch of my life. Lord knows I’d slump if she could._ She felt as if days had passed since she’d woken up that morning. Betty had risen with the sun, showered, dressed and allowed her mother to bundle her into their ageing Toyota Camry. She’d watched the sunrise over Riverdale from the car window, half-listening to her mother’s detailed instructions, the rest of her attention devoted to trying to remember the feeling she’d been feeling when she woke up. For a moment, she had not been able to remember who or where she was. For a moment, she wasn’t Betty Cooper, the small-town girl who hadn’t been able to hold Archie’s interest when someone brighter and shinier came to town. For what could only be a handful of seconds, she wasn’t the meek and mild daughter of Hal and Alice Cooper, the compliant beauty queen, the loyal foot solder of the cheer team, the above-average softball player and talented classical guitarist.

For a moment, she just was. And what a wonderful moment that had been.

Betty lasted five minutes before succumbing to the siren song of her guitar. She figured she needed to warm up anyway, even if she was scheduled second-to-last for the talent section.

Carefully, conscious that half her body was now immobile, Betty climbed down off the stool with some difficulty, only to be overwhelmed by a disorientating sense of dizziness when her feet touched the ground. She swayed momentarily as the sensation came upon her, the world swirling around her, before finding her balance. _Pull yourself together, Betty,_ she admonished herself as her nausea ebbed and spatial awareness returned. _Just pull yourself together and get your damn guitar._ Determined, Betty fixed her gaze on the guitar case leaning against the back wall of the dressing room. It was unmistakably her own, emblazoned with what she thought were some pretty cool band stickers (Glass Animals, The Smiths, alt-J, to name a few) and a not-so-cool Girl Scout sticker she had put on a couple of years past, back when she was fully invested in the #scoutlyf.

 _I really need to get some rubbing alcohol and rip that thing off,_ she reflected as she marked her slow passage across the room, catching snatches of conversation as she did so, fragmented sentences about hair, makeup and the latest scandalous that Veronica Lodge was wrapped up in, something about how she “ _ought to be dragged kicking and screaming outta here by her mama. But where is her mama? Nowhere to be seen, as per usual_ ”. Veronica always seemed to set people’s tongues wagging. So much so that Betty was starting to think she got a kick out of riling everyone up.

 _It’s probably the reason why she doesn’t have many friends at school_ , Betty reflected, _apart from all those gross, thirsty guys_.

The girls Betty hung around with loathed Veronica, either on Betty’s behalf, believing that Veronica had stolen Archie away from her, or because they were incredibly jealous of the attention she drew from all the guys (and even some of the male teachers). At recess, Veronica could be seen with either one or many guys flocked around her, jostling for her regard, without a girl in sight. In Betty’s opinion, the guys seemed pretty pathetic, with all that forced masculinity and those painfully obvious sexual innuendos they insisted on dropping into conversation with all the subtlety of a steel anvil. Betty wondered how Veronica put up with it. She could deal with that behaviour for a short period of time (sometimes it was even flattering), but every recess and lunch? It sounded awful…and a little lonely too.

“Hey! Watch where you’re—” Lost in her thoughts, Betty heard the startled voice and had but a moment to steel herself for impact before she slammed into another body, a solid _thwack_ that did not help with her receding nausea _at all_ and would’ve knocked her off her feet if two arms hadn’t gripped hold of her forearms tightly and held her up.

“Well shit, if it isn’t Mary the 1st in the flesh,” the person holding her remarked sardonically as Betty regained her bearings, her head swimming. “What on earth do I owe the pleasure of running into you? Quite literally, kinda painfully, I should say.”

Recognising the voice, Betty glanced up to see source of the all the rumours standing before her, smirking, dressed in an absolutely scandalous scarlet dress, sinfully short and with a plunging neckline that brought the heat to Betty’s cheeks and explained the snippet of conversation she had caught earlier. Here she was, Veronica Lodge, and of course she was riling people up again, burning the house down and it was all so… _right_ there in Betty’s face, so much so that she didn’t know where to look: there were legs that went on for days, _way_ too much cleavage and the mocking, wry grin on Veronica’s gorgeous face, an expression that had the effect of making Betty feel silly and small and incredibly exposed.

“Sorry,” she muttered, directing her apology to Veronica’s black heels, shrugging off the older girl’s hands, still feeling a little faint. “I didn’t see you—”

“Hey, it’s cool.” Betty watched as Veronica’s black heels took a step back. “Your costume is seriously lit. May I?” Before she could protest, Betty felt cool fingers under her chin, gently tilting her face up so that she was looking her nemesis in the eye. Up close, Veronica looked how you would expect a rich heiress to look: dark hair carefully pinned and hairsprayed into an elaborate up do, infuriatingly symmetrical ticks of eyeliner canted at the corner of each eye and a coat of lipstick applied with precision, a lovely shade somewhere between red and dark purple, surely outside of Betty’s price range.

“Wow,” the older girl exclaimed as she regarded Betty, her expression open and fascinated, brown eyes alight with interest. Meanwhile, Betty felt herself shrink in the face of Veronica’s superbly curated beauty, and found herself wishing that the floor would swallow her up. “I almost didn’t recognise you, Cooper, this is next level. Did you do it yourself?”

“I…no,” Betty murmured in reply, surprised by the older girl’s sincerity. The two girls had spent last summer vying for Archie’s favour, with Veronica being the eventual victor, if that’s what you could call it. In truth, Betty had given up. It was all too hard; Archie was so very conflicted, and Betty fancied she deserved more than mere ambivalence from him. Time had passed since then. Archie and Veronica weren’t even together anymore, but in Betty’s mind she and Veronica remained rivals. In Betty’s mind, they’d stopped being friends a long time ago, which is why Veronica’s familiarity and sincerity came as such a surprise. It wasn’t supposed to go down this way. Where was the tension? The lingering resentment? “Actually, Mom did most of it. And it was her idea.”

“Yeah?” Veronica nodded as she took a swig of her steel drink bottle, cleared her throat and coughed lightly into the crook of her elbow. “Well, Alice has outdone herself this time. Anyway—” she smiled brightly, a full wattage grin that lit up her face, surprising Betty yet again. “—what do you think of the dress? Not nearly as impressive as your ensemble, we can all agree, but I think it’ll make an impact.”

“I think…” Betty wondered if she’d stumbled into the twilight zone, one where she and Veronica had sleepovers and shared their views on each other’s outfits. “I think I know why everyone has been talking about you.”

“Hmm,” Veronica hummed, a flicker of emotion sparking in her eye, there one second and gone the next before her mask snapped back into place, a lop-sided grin tweaking her lips. “That good, huh? You just wait ’til they hear me play, Cooper. I might just get a standing ovation.”

Betty seriously doubted it, and that doubt must have shown on her face, because suddenly Veronica was laughing.

“You don’t believe me?”

“No, I really don’t.”

Veronica made a mock sorrowful face. “You’re ruthless, Cooper,” she quipped, treating Betty to a conspiratorial wink as she did so. “Anyway—” She checked her phone. “—as much as I’m loving this pep talk, I gotta go before I miss my cue. Good luck, dude!”

The younger woman watched her depart, bemused and faintly irritated by their interaction. With a determined shake of her head, Betty collected her guitar, found a comfortable spot to sit (as comfortable as she could be in her godforsaken corset) and started to practice some chords, occasionally pausing to tune her instrument, her brow furrowed in concentration. And yet her mind drifted. She found herself thinking about Veronica and that incredibly short dress. It was either confidence bordering on arrogance or sheer madness. It would be all anyone wanted to talk about after her performance, which was a shame because Veronica was a gifted pianist. Betty knew this as she had heard her before, months ago, playing after hours in the empty music room at school, when she thought there was no one around to hear her. She would’ve been a welcome addition to the school band, of which Betty was a member…but of course Veronica Lodge was far too cool for that.

A small commotion by the side of the stage drew Betty’s attention. At the sound of raised voices, her fingers stilled and her absentminded music ceased. From where she was sitting, Betty could see two people arguing by the side of the stage. Veronica was instantly recognisable in her red dress. The other person was an older woman, armed with a clipboard wearing capris, a polo shirt and sneakers. A pageant official, Betty surmised. She could hear the two women arguing, but couldn’t make out the words. The older woman’s face was screwed up and her cheeks was ruddy with displeasure, a stark contrast to the thin flaxen hair that framed her face. Betty thought Veronica was frustrated too—she couldn’t see her face as she wasn’t facing in her direction, however was able to observe the tense set of her shoulders and frustrated gesticulations, her red-tipped nails sketching exasperation into the air before her.

Eventually, after what could have been no more than half a minute of heated discussion, Veronica took a step back, her hands held up in mute surrender, turned on her heel abruptly and started striding towards the stage. The older woman went to follow her, her face darkening to a disconcerting shade of red. Meanwhile, some of the other contestants subtly gravitated towards the scene, drawn by the scent of drama.

“Don’t you walk away from me, young lady!” This time Betty was able to hear the official, her voice acidic. “There are children out there!”

“It’s not a bloody lap dance,” Veronica retorted over her shoulder, the words drawn out into a sardonic drawl, yet there was a serrated edge to her voice, as if she wasn’t nearly as unfazed as she appeared. The gathering crowd of contestants let out a timid titter of suppressed amusement. “I’m playing the piano for Chrissakes.”

“Veronica Lodge—” the ruddy pageant enforcer whisper-shouted, taking a step forward, as if she was contemplating physically restraining Veronica. And Betty could almost see the scene unfolding in her mind’s eye: the official would seize Veronica by the back of her dress, the sound of tearing fabric would sound, followed by a cascade of horrified gasps. In response, Veronica would wheel around, laughing, her tattered dress rendering her more immodest than ever, and tell the official to go fuck herself and that she would be hearing from her father.

Of course, none of this transpired. Veronica was too quick. No sooner had the lady stepped forward, had Veronica disappeared from view as she entered the stage. Betty heard the murmur of the crowd ebb in response to her arrival, and then rise again, no doubt prompted by her choice of outfit. The whispers melded together, a soft susurration, not dissimilar from the sound of the sea crashing on the shore, although some people weren’t so discreet. Betty could’ve sworn she heard an old woman’s voice loudly proclaim “harlot!”, before she was hurriedly shushed by her family.

Curiously, still cradling her guitar, Betty walked to the side of the stage, moving past the aggrieved pageant official, who stood with her arms crossed firmly across her chest, her face twisted into an ugly sneer as she peered hatefully at Veronica. Eventually, Betty was able to see Veronica from her vantage point settling down onto the piano bench onstage, the already short hem of her scarlet dress riding up, exposing a truly unseemly amount of leg. _The judges won’t like that,_ Betty thought worriedly, cheeks hot and chest tight. She could almost feel the waves of rage emanating off the official standing behind her, not to mention the disapproval rising from the crowd below. _They won’t like that at all._

Onstage, Veronica didn’t seem to notice or care. Her hands were resting lightly on the keys and her face had grown smooth, all the tension draining from her expression, her ever-present smirk absent, brown eyes taking on a faraway, almost lost look. _She looks very different like this_ , Betty observed, _younger and…_ Betty couldn’t identify what else, the word eluded her, and she was still struggling to articulate it, trying to ascribe meaning to how Veronica made her feel in that moment, when the older girl started to play.

 _Oh_ , Betty thought she listened, an exhalation of both surprise and pleasure. She recognised Chopin, one of his harder pieces, not something you would expect a teenager girl to play at a small-town pageant, and yet here she was; Veronica Lodge was showing her disdain for everyone with her red dress, fuck-you attitude and, of course, her music, with the raw talent that made a mockery of the sneering pageant officials, uppity judges and disapproving mothers in the crowd. It was the combination of those things that had Betty caught up, stuck somewhere in the middle, not knowing whether to scoff from the sidelines or close her eyes and sink into the glorious music.

Ultimately, Betty chose the latter. No one needed to know, least of all Veronica.

There was a smattering of begrudging applause when Veronica finished, not nearly as much as she deserved, Betty observed privately. The older girl left the stage quickly when she was done, gracelessly hopping off the bench, not bothering to bow or curtsey, her chin high and shoulders set defiantly as she walked off stage. By the time she disappeared behind the curtains, the audience was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. _Gosh_ , Betty thought to herself, _you’d think someone’s died or something._ Apparently Veronica had that kind of effect on people.

The talent section was nearly complete by the time Betty got her chance to perform. She had never been so eager to get onstage in her life—the sooner she finished her performance, the sooner she could wrestle herself out of the medieval torture device compressing her organs. Betty was so preoccupied by her discomfort that she barely felt the wave of nerves that usually assailed her before a performance. When she was given the signal to take the stage, she breathed a sigh of relief and hurried centerstage, her guitar warm and ready in her hands.

Betty fell into the music. That was how it felt when she played—a most glorious feeling of falling, an unparalleled sense of freedom. She was playing something from Guilani—a composition that was completely out of step with her character, given that Guilani been born 200 years or so after Mary Queen of Scots’ reign, but Betty wasn’t worried. She was fairly confident she was the only classical guitarist in the building and therefore the only one in a position to spot the inconsistency. The music came naturally to Betty, her fingers plucking the strings with intuitive precision. Her discomfort and pain faded as she played, and she lost track of time. Soon enough, Betty forgot about her mother, the judges, the grimacing pageant official and even Veronica Lodge. She played and it could’ve been an age or a matter of minutes. It was all so easy, blissfully so, and Betty couldn’t help but wonder how people struggled with music, how they laboured over their instruments, couldn’t conceive of something so natural, so effortless, being so hard. She played and fell and eventually, she finished.

The applause was rapturous. Evidently, her performance had gone down well. She could see the audience members beaming at her—some were even wiping tears from their eyes. All the while, her mother was giving her a hearty thumbs up and a couple of the traditionally stoic judges had cracked a rare smile. It ought to have been a wonderful moment. She’d earned this, hadn’t she? And yet Betty couldn’t shake the sense that this moment, this applause, her mother’s giddy grin and the judges’ rare smiles, were naught by a hollow victory. She knew that they weren’t just judging her on the music. If that were true, Veronica would’ve received the acknowledgement she deserved, instead of a dismissive slow clap off stage.

Back in the dressing room, Betty collapsed into a small, sunken sofa, still holding her guitar in her arms, and closed her eyes momentarily. She felt drained, hungry and extremely lightheaded. The day was starting to wear on her and it wasn’t over yet. They hadn’t had the time to get photos earlier and Betty knew her mom wouldn’t let her take off her costume until she had a whole darn album to pore over on a quiet, rainy day. The problem with that plan was that Betty wasn’t sure she had it in her, at least not right that very second. And that was when she heard her mother’s voice.

“Betty!”

The blonde teenager shot up off the couch, surprising herself with her sudden burst of energy, hurriedly placed her guitar back in its case and clipped it shut, before standing back up and weighing up her options. She could either acquiesce to her mother’s demands and get the informal photoshoot over as soon as possible…or she could avoid her for a half hour or so and pray to God she forgot about the photoshoot amongst the excitement of the judging.

“Betty! Sweetheart!” Alice Cooper’s voice was louder. She was coming closer. “Where are you? We need to get those photos before you ruin your makeup.”

Option 1 was the more sensible, less controversial option. It would make Betty's life easier in the long run. Her mother would really appreciate the effort, even if she had a hard time saying so. Betty ought to pick her battles, and this was surely a small concession, something she could give her mother without causing a fuss. All in all, it was an obvious choice.

“Betty Cooper! I hope you’re not avoiding me!"

Betty ducked behind a clothing rack. She blamed the spontaneous decision on the adrenaline pumping through her veins, the limited supply of air to her brain and the insufferable shrillness to her mother’s voice. _Was that something only mothers developed?_ Betty wondered idly as she hid behind what appeared to be a bunch of costumes from last year’s school play. _Did you get old, have kids, and suddenly develop the ability to shatter glass with your voice?_

“Betty!”

Between two taffeta ballgowns, Betty caught sight of a flash of baby blue. Her mother was now prowling around in the dressing room. She could hear the click of her heels and her audible huffs of disapproval. Eventually, after what felt like a very long time but could only been a minute at most, Betty heard her mother’s footsteps receding. Letting out a soft, strangled sigh, she slipped from behind the clothes rack and set her sights on the “EXIT” sign illuminated above a door to the rear of the stage. She would take a moment to herself, get some fresh air and do what she must after that. Grabbing some makeup wipes and her phone from her duffel bag, Betty changed into a pair of old once-white sneakers and shrugged on her favourite, well worn denim jacket before creeping across the dressing room and slipping outside the hall.

The door opened up onto a short flight of concrete steps leading down into the parking lot behind the hall. Betty could see her mom’s car from her vantage point, a faded red Toyota Camry that had surely seen better days. She studied it as she breathed in deep lungfuls of the cool, crisp May air, allowing the slight breeze to dry the clammy skein of sweat coating her exposed skin, and began to scrub the heavy foundation off her face using one of the makeup wipes.

“Cooper?”

Betty startled at the sound of her name, knocking her elbow on the railing she was leaning on and dropping the used makeup wipes on the ground. “Damn,” she cursed quietly to herself as a nauseating ache spread through her arm. She’d hit her funny bone, which she knew was neither a bone, nor was it that funny when you hit it. _Whoever decided on the name “funny bone” wasa complete asshole_ , Betty silently fumed as she cradled her arm.

Wincing, she turned to the source of the voice that had startled her, only then seeing what she had overlooked when she escaped from the hall. None other than Veronica Lodge was sitting down on the concrete stairs, still in her performance outfit, her half unzipped backpack at her feet and her steel drink bottle held in one hand. She looked more dishevelled than she had when Betty had run into her earlier. More disheveled and far less imposing. Her heels were sitting on the step next to her, and she didn’t seem to mind that she was sitting on a grimy patch of concrete.

“I didn’t see you there,” she remarked lightly, her expression uncharacteristically open and curious, “You been out here for long?”

“Just a couple of minutes.” Betty went to run her fingers through her hair, before realising she still had her auburn wig on her head. Sighing, she carefully unpinned the wig, removed it from her head and shook out her blonde hair. The relief was indescribable. “Why are you out here?”

Veronica was studying her with an intensity that made Betty uncomfortable. “I should be asking you that. I was here first.”

“Seriously, Ronnie?” Betty, annoyed by Veronica’s capacity to get under her skin, turned to go back inside, pausing briefly to pick up and put the used make up wipes in the trashcan to her right, just barely resisting the urge to throw the auburn wig away with them, where it surely belonged. “Fine then, I’ll just leave you to it—”

“I’m kidding!” Veronica replied quickly, prompting Betty to pause on her way back into the hall. There was something about the older girl’s voice in that moment that may her reconsider leaving, an almost pleading note, as if she didn’t want to be left alone. “I’m just kidding,” she repeated before explaining, “I needed a little fresh air. It’s so tiring in there, everyone eying each other off, the faux support from the other contestants.” The dark-haired girl looked up at Betty as she spoke, gesturing for her to sit down on the ground next to her. “Everyone constantly jostling for superiority.”

Slowly, suspiciously, certainly against her better judgment, Betty lowered herself onto the step next to Veronica. “It’s a competition,” she observed in a flat voice, thinking that Veronica surely had some practice asserting her superiority. “What did you expect, Ronnie? A slumber party and friendly game of Truth or Dare?”

Veronica chuckled to herself, “I wouldn’t’ve minded that,” she murmured, looking askance at Betty, a grin twitching at the corners of her ruby lips. There was something charming about that smile. Betty could see it working on any guy unfortunate enough to venture into her orbit, and was somewhat offended to see Veronica deploy it now, on her, given their history. If she thought a charismatic smile was enough to get Betty on side, she was sorely mistaken.

Sick of the pretence, Betty turned to face Veronica and asked, “Then why'd you do it?”

The older girl stared back at her, her grin fading as puzzlement clouded her eyes, one eyebrow arched in mute inquiry. “Do what?”

Betty gestured vaguely to their surroundings. “If this means so little to you, if it’s as vapid as you seem to think, why bother signing up in the first place?” The younger girl couldn’t quite keep the bitterness out of her voice. After a long summer of tolerating Veronica’s antics, she was beyond tired of beating around the bush. “Surely you’ve got better things to do with your time.”

Unexpectedly, Veronica shook her head slowly, ran her fingers through her hair, and reach up to fiddle with the chain around her neck, in what struck Betty as a strangely self-conscious sequence of movements. “I actually don’t,” she admitted after a pause in a quiet voice, her gaze fixed on the parking lot before them. It was jam-packed with cars without a person in sight. Everyone else was inside, waiting for the judges to hand down the results. They were where Betty was supposed to be, and yet she was here, with Veronica Lodge, watching the light bleed from the sky. Sometimes life really was stranger than fiction. “Have anything better to do, that is. Dad canceled my credit card and Mom’s not talking to me at the moment. Apparently I embarrassed her at the country club or something.”

“What about—” Betty began, then clamped her mouth shut, wishing she could reel the sentence back in.

Too late. Understanding swept over Veronica’s features and she nodded. “We’re not hanging out anymore,” she explained, voice soft and a little distant. “We ran our course, I think.”

“You cheated on him.” The accusation burst from Betty’s lips, prompted by her indignation at the older teenager’s explanation. She’d broken her and Archie up, then she’d broken his heart, and now she was trying to abdicate responsibility for it all. The gall of it. “Don’t pretend like—”

“We were never exclusive, Cooper,” Veronica interjected coldly before Betty could say something she might come to regret. “I made that very clear from the start. Not that it’s any of your business anyway.”

Betty couldn’t stifle her eye roll if she tried. “And I’m just supposed to believe—”

“Believe whatever the fuck you want.” Veronica flared, her eyes flashing, ruby lips curling in distaste. “If Archie needs to cast me as the villain, if you do, so be it. If it helps you sleep at night, Betty, I’m more than happy to be of service.”

“You’ve got no shame,” Betty muttered as she shifted uncomfortably on the concrete step, her breaths short and laboured. She desperately needed to get the corset off, but couldn’t seem to muster the strength to stand up and walk inside, not when there was a migraine building behind her eyes and her throat felt dry, like she hadn’t had a drop of water in weeks. There was also the disconcerting sense of numbness spreading throughout her abdomen, which surely couldn’t be a good sign. “Seriously though…why’d you do it?”

“Why did I hook up with someone else?” Veronica rolled her eyes and sighed. “Because he was hot and I was horny and Archie and I were over and done. Lord give me strength, Betty.”

“Gosh, Ronnie. That’s not what I was asking,” the younger teenager responded in a peeved and breathless tone, cheeks warm from the older girl’s candour. She did _not_ need to know about Veronica Lodge’s libido. “Why did you sign up for the pageant? Why grace us with your presence? Or do you just get a kick out of mocking everyone?”

“I wasn’t mocking—”

“Don’t lie to me. You weren’t being serious out there.”

Veronica laughed then, a crooked grin twisting her mouth and lifted her hands up in surrender, palms facing forward. “You’re relentless, Betty Cooper,” she chuckled, her brown eyes alight with amusement. “Did I not play Chopin well? Did I not give it my all?”

“It’s not that. It’s the other things.” Betty cast her gaze away, searching for the right words, and feeling her frustration grow when she was unable to find them. In truth, Veronica played superbly. She was exceptionally talented. That was a fact. Veronica deserved applause and adulation and instead she’d been booted from the competition. And it was no one’s fault but her own. Why had she worn that dress? What on earth had possessed her? She’d got what was coming to her, hadn’t she? ”You know what I mean.”

“I don’t actually.”

“Don’t be obtuse, Veronica.” Betty scoffed breathlessly, her hands rising to the hem of the corset, fingers slipping under the restrictive material in an attempt to create a little space between the fabric and her body, just a little room to breathe. “You made it so they wouldn’t notice the music. You wore that dress and drew all the wrong kind of attention. And you did on purpose, because you could.”

Veronica shrugged in response, prompting a strap of her dress to slide off her shoulder, her bare legs and feet sprawled across the steps before her. Meanwhile, windblown tendrils of dark harm slipped from her elaborate up-do. She looked as if she were slowly dissembling. Unwinding. Shedding her many skins to become someone else entirely. _Only Veronica Lodge,_ Betty thought as she watched her, caught between bitter incredulity and begrudging appreciation, _only Veronica Lodge could make falling apart look so beautiful._

“Maybe you’re right, Betty. Maybe I did it because I could, because I felt like it. Maybe I did it because I wanted to rile them all up, all those assholes who go to church every Sunday but wouldn’t know the first thing about compassion or charity.” The older girl huffed, threw her head back and closed her eyes, her face tilted to the darkening sky. “Maybe I did it because I knew I could play something wonderful and they’d still only ever be interested in looking at my tits. Maybe I did it to prove a point. Or maybe…” She barked a laugh—a biting, pained sound—and shook her head. “Or maybe I did it prove that there is no fucking point.”

It was the most profound thing she had ever said in her presence, and completely inconsistent with the rumours that circulated about Veronica—rumours about her sense of entitlement, arrogance and vacuousness. And maybe if Betty had been feeling a little more generous, maybe if her corset wasn’t making her chest ache and her breath short, she would’ve been a little more inclined to listen to what Veronica was saying, perhaps she would’ve even seen the truth in her words, because there was truth there, more than Betty cared to reconcile with. Maybe if Veronica weren’t looking so gosh darn gorgeous sitting there, infuriatingly so, Betty may have indulged her, at the very least.

Yet that was not the case on that waning afternoon. Betty was fed up, and not about to feel sorry for Veronica Lodge, of all people.

“And while you were having this existential crisis, the rest of us just wanted to dress up and participate in the pageant,” she grumbled in response, eliciting an incredulous chuckle from the older girl, who turned her look at her, a half-smile touching the corners of her lips. “And no offence, Ronnie, but you’re hardly the person to be giving a lecture on morality. ”

“Well shit.” Veronica laughed, the corners of her eyes crinkling in mirth. “You really don’t pull any punches, do ya?”

Betty rolled her eyes. “I’m being serious. You don’t understand how frustrating it is to watch you—frustrating because it’s so obvious to everyone that you could win this if you wanted to. Your family’s got money, you know all the right things to say, you just don’t say ‘em…and clearly you’re…” The younger woman trailed off, felt her face grow warm and forced herself to shrug off her inexplicable embarrassment. She was simply stating the obvious. It didn’t mean anything. “…well, y’know…you’re not terrible looking.”

“Not terrible looking? Fuck, Betty!” Veronica doubled over in laughter, her hair falling over her face, her shoulders shaking. She laughed so hard she started to cough, prompting her to fumble around in the backpack next to her stainless steel water drink bottle, from which she took a hefty swig before regaining her composure. “What a compliment,” she murmured to herself, swiping a tear off her cheek her the back of her hand, her makeup starting to run. “ _Not terrible looking_?”

“Oh, shoosh,” Betty mumbled, her cheeks hot, feeling foolish and a little bemused by the intensity of Veronica’s laughter. It really hadn’t been _that_ funny. Frowning, she found herself wishing she was still wearing her porcelain foundation, if only so that she could conceal the redness in her cheeks. “Y’know what I mean, though. If you actually gave a crap, you could win this thing easy. Some people would kill for that chance.”

Veronica shook her head, bringing the bottle to her lips again. “Betty Cooper,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone, “I honestly never picked you for a liar.”

“What?” Betty was indignant. “You don’t think people would want what you have? ‘Cause you’re honestly deluded—”

“There was only ever one person who was gonna win this thing,” Veronica interjected calmly before Betty could really pick up steam. “And that person is sitting next to me.”

“—if you think that…” the younger woman trailed off, wondering if she might’ve heard Veronica wrong.

“Don’t look so surprised, Betty.” Veronica studied her closely, her brow knitted in scrutiny. “You’ve got that girl-next-door wholesomeness this town can get enough of. You’re genuinely kind to people, even people who seriously don’t even deserve it. And you’re beautiful in the effortless way that makes other girls kind of hate your guts,” Veronica said in that same matter-of-fact tone, her face turned away from Betty, remarking as if this fact were as plain as day, as if she were merely commenting on the sky’s habit of being blue—a far cry from Betty’s half-baked assessment of Veronica’s beauty.

“And of course you play that guitar like your fucking soul is on fire. It’s pretty rude, if you ask me…Although we both know the piece you played today was not one old Mary would’ve heard in her lifetime…” the older girl trailed off, almost talking to herself now, absently taking a drink out of her water bottle as spoke. Meanwhile, Betty sat very still, her heart beating a rapid staccato in her chest as she listened to Veronica say more than she ever had in one sitting—more than she ever had, and it was all about her. “You’ll win this easy, and the one after this too, probably.”

Betty was quiet for a moment, speechless, trying to understand why Veronica would say those things, searching for a hidden agenda…and then it hit her.

“You’re drunk,” she murmured, suddenly comprehending the reason for Veronica’s candour (if that’s what it was) and delirious laughter. She felt both relief and disappointment at the knowledge—a blend of emotions she couldn’t quite explain.“What’s in the bottle, Ron?”

Veronica glanced at her, brown eyes wide and slightly unfocussed. “Y’know, I can’t even remember,” she chuckled after a pause, one hand rising to fiddle with her necklace. “Some kind of brown liquor, I think. Something to make this bearable.” She let out a trembly sigh, set the bottle down and closed her eyes. Betty watched her closely as she did so, studying the infamous Veronica Lodge in repose. Strange how she seemed so much younger like this; absent was the wry smile, the mocking appraisal in her expression and crease carved between her eyes. It reminded Betty of the faraway look Veronica had worn onstage, when she was lost in the music.

“That doesn’t mean I didn’t mean what I said, though,” Veronica continued, unaware of Betty’s gaze. “You’re good at this. They fucking adore you, dude. I saw it myself, backstage. When you played, no one could take their eyes off you. Is that your mom’s doing too? The music?”

Still reeling from the unexpected direction of their conversation, Betty found herself returning the older girl’s candour in turn. “I pick the music,” she said, “It’s pretty much the only thing I get a say on.”

There had been a time when Alice Cooper decided that too, back when Betty was younger and firmly under the thumb of her mother. Eventually, she had stood up to her (an exceedingly rare event), prompted by something said by her music teacher at the time, a young man in his early-thirties, kind and passionate about his craft. _Stop playing for your mother, your teachers or even for me, Betty. You keep doing that and you’ll be playing technically perfect and terribly meaningless music for the rest of your life. You need to play for yourself. Because you love it, because it makes you feel something you can’t get anywhere else._

“I figured as much. No one in their right mind would agree to wear that godawful torture device.” Veronica looked at her corset pointedly. “I can see it cutting into your skin from here. Seriously though, is it hurting you?”

“I…” Betty began to speak, but the words got caught, snagged on an inexplicable lump in her throat. She was exhausted, in pain and now it seemed, completely without warning, on the brink of tears. It had been such a long day, after all. Such a long day and maybe Veronica had a point when she talked about how taxing this could be, the endless comparisons and insurmountable expectations. So much strain, and this was the first time today someone had asked how she was. It was first time someone had treated her like a living, breathing, thinking and feeling human being, instead of an object.

“Betty?”

Betty shrugged and nodded, and maybe Veronica saw something in her face just then, the quiver in her lips or the sheen of unshed tears in her eyes, because suddenly she was getting up off the stoop, cursing under her breath and moving towards Betty.

“Why didn’t you say something sooner?” she admonished her gently as she positioned herself behind the younger woman, her hands rising to carefully pull her denim jacket off.

“It’s okay. It’s not that bad, really. I think I’m just tired, or hormonal or—”

“You’re in pain, for fuck’s sake,” she spoke quietly as she manoeuvred the denim jacket off Betty's shoulders and placed it in her lap. “You hold onto that while I try and figure out how to loosen this thing,” she instructed and a moment later, Betty felt the touch of cool fingers grazing her back and flinched. “Sorry,” Veronica murmured, and a thought rose in Betty's mind, unbidden. _Cold hands, warm heart._ Something her Nanna used to say. Strange that it should pop into her head in the moment, for Veronica was the last person on earth that Betty would associate with a warm heart. Or, at least, she had been.

“I think I’ve got it…aha!” The older girl’s soft exhalation of satisfaction startled Betty’s from her thoughts, and coincided with the indescribable blend of release and pain as the restrictive fabric around her sides loosened.

Betty heaved a sigh of relief and dropped her head, overcome with relief. “Thank you,” she gasped.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Veronica asked quietly, a whiff of whiskey on her breath, her hands just barely touching Betty’s sides. She was surprisingly gentle. Betty hadn’t expected that. She’d always imagined Veronica as bold and brazen and lacking in any kind of subtlety. That was how she had stolen Archie, wasn’t it? She had seduced him, hadn’t she? She was the type that launched herself at guys, the type that called the shots and kissed them until they were out of breath. That last thought of Betty’s, the one about Veronica kissing, made her feel a little strange in that moment, the sensation of something warm and weighty settling in the pit of her stomach. “You’re shaking a little.”

“Just tired,” she whispered, shrugging off the confusing feeling. “It’s been a long day, y’know?”

“It sure has,” Veronica agreed as she lifted herself up off her haunches and moved to sit back down on her own grimy, gum-spotted patch of concrete. “I honestly don’t know how you’ve done this more than once, Betty. It’s totally weird. The moms are all painfully neurotic, the dads are either looking like they’d like to be anywhere else in the world, or looking like they enjoying being here a little too much. And the hairspray. So. Much. Hairspray. I’m surprised I can still breath with all that shit in my lungs.”

Betty hid a grin at the outraged expression on Veronica’s face. “You’re exaggerating.”

“I’m not, Betty!” The older girl looked at her, affronted. “The whole thing is horrible. I think my ears are still bleeding from Jodie’s rendition of Stars and Stripes on that godforsaken recorder. I told her off-stage that totally she killed it and damn did I mean it. She fucking butchered it.”

Betty giggled, couldn’t help herself, and said, “She’s done the same thing for the last two years. Every pageant, Stars and Stripes played on that same squeaky recorder. At first it got on my nerves too, but you get used to if after awhile. Now it’s pretty much a helpful reminder, I hear it and think _oh_ _we’ve started at the talent section now, probably should start tuning my guitar._ ”

“I think I’d prefer the blast of an air-horn,” Veronica admitted simply and Betty let out a bark of laughter, surprising both of them. “You know I’m telling the truth!” the older girl claimed with a small smile as Betty shook her head, the same grin reflected on her features. “Okay then.” Veronica turned to face her, her expression at once playful and defiant. “Tell me one good experience you’ve had at a pageant. To prove to me this isn’t complete and utter bullshit.”

Betty smiled easily and, to her surprise, found herself telling Veronica the story of the girl who swiped her mom’s credit card, ordered a ridiculous amount of pizza and contrived to have the pizza boy deliver it through the backstage door. She told Veronica about the giddy mania of the girls that night—hungry, sleep-deprived and drunk on small rebellion as they gathered around the steaming pizza boxes. She described how the competition seemed to fall away in those moments, how they talked and squealed in laughter, how lovely and silly it all was. She half-expected Veronica to scoff and shake her head at her story, but she didn’t do that at all. When Betty glanced at her, she was watching her intently with a goofy grin plastered on her face.

They didn’t stop talking when Betty finished her story. The conversation continued and it was effortless. Betty challenged Veronica to name one good thing about the pageants and was surprised to hear Veronica talk about another contestant, Mina. Betty winced at the mention of the girl, riddled with second-hand shame as she recalled what had occurred earlier that day.Mina had straight up burped on stage in the middle of answering the question about what her ideal date would be—a loud, lengthy burp that was, in Betty’s opinion, totally gross and little awe-inspiring. Indeed, the timing might’ve been comical if the crowd weren’t packed full of hardcore pageant goers, people who tended to revert to abject horror and contempt at the slightest discourtesy, rather than levity.

Betty thought Veronica might taunt Mina for that, even found herself preparing to defend the girl in the face of a barrage of unwarranted insults. Yet Veronica was full of surprises today. She talked instead about how she had overheard Mina discussing the unfortunate _faux pas_ with her mother in the parking lot.

“They were laughing, Betty,” she murmured, a small smile on her lips. “They were cracking up about it. Mina’s mom had tears in her eyes and they were shaking, shaking ‘cause they were laughing so much. And it was just so…lovely, y’know?” Veronica looked at her, as if searching for an answer in her expression. “It was so lovely.”

Betty smiled too, a little wistfully, knowing her mother would’ve dragged her off stage by the hair if she’d dared shame her like that. Alice Cooper would be livid, shaking not with laughter but with rage and that got Betty thinking about Veronica’s mother, Hermione Lodge. She wondered how she would react to the indignity. She’d heard quite a bit about Veronica’s father, Hiram Lodge; his arrogance, the charges of fraud and embezzlement, and pending trial in New York, but not so much at all about Hermione, his loyal wife—only that she’d relocated to Riverdale to shield herself and her daughter from the press. As far as Betty could tell, she wasn’t all that involved in Veronica’s life. Veronica was probably the only girl at the pageant who wasn’t accompanied by at least one of her parents, and she spent most of her time running around Riverdale with boys, drinking and causing havoc, and even spending time with a couple of men far too old to hanging around a teenage girl. She did all of this all the time, seemingly with no consequences, and you’d be forgiven for thinking her Hermione Lodge didn’t care. There was no one to pull the wild Veronica Lodge in line, no one to stop her spiralling out of control.

Betty and Veronica kept talking until the sun sank low, sitting fat and heavy on the horizon, oozing rose and lavender light onto the roofs and hoods of the cars spread out before them, turning the grubby parking lot into a pastel checkerboard of light. It was kind of wonderful, and for the first time that day, Betty allowed herself to bask in the moment without feeling the need to pick it to pieces. She allowed herself to dwell in the twilight zone, a place where she and Veronica didn’t have to be at each other’s throats all the time, a place where the drama with Archie seemed juvenile and insignificant, a thing of the distant past.

“I guess I better go,” Veronica said eventually, after a minute or two of silence has passed between them. “I should’ve bailed ages ago, before the pageant moms decide to run me out of here with their pitchforks.”

“They’re not going to do that,” Betty demurred with a crooked grin, studiously ignoring the pang of dismay she felt as she watched Veronica gather her belongings. “At least not now that you’re safely outside, where there’s no risk of you giving out any more public lap dances.”

“Oh fuck.” Veronica laughed as she jumped off the step, a fully bodied cackle, her head thrown back, neck exposed and chest heaving. Betty drunk in the sight for a moment, caught up in her harsh, throaty laughter, the crinkles at the corners of her eyes, the cut of her clavicle. Her heart swelled a little at the sight—a sensation she put down to a natural appreciation for an objectively beautiful person. Nothing out of the ordinary. “You heard that, did you?”

Casting her gaze away from Veronica, Betty swallowed, hard, and replied, “It was hard not to. I think pretty much everyone could hear it.”

“Yeah well, that’s how she was making it out, like a little leg was going to corrupt the children.” Veronica scoffed and rolled her eyes as she turned to face Betty, straightening to her full height. “Can you believe that?”

“I can. This is Riverdale we’re talking about.”

In reply, Veronica simply shrugged and nodded before bending over to put her phone and purse in the surprisingly scruffy backpack she had been carrying around, faded green in colour and with fraying straps.

“How are you getting home?” Betty asked curiously, her eyes on Veronica’s scant attire. “Is someone picking you up?”

“I’ll get the bus.”

“The bus?” Betty’s brow knitted in concern. “In that?”

“I’ll be fine.” 

“But it’s dark,” Betty murmured, eyeing the older girl, wondering if she appreciated the kind of unwanted attention she might attract at this time of the evening. “Plus it’s getting cold. Here—” Without thinking, she stood up, grabbed the denim jacket in her lap and held it out to Veronica. “—at least take my jacket. You can give it back to me the next time we see each other.”

Veronica looked at her then, really looked at her. The older girl’s body was backlit by the warm amber glow of the streetlights, her brown skin raised in gooseflesh, a contemplative, intrigued look gracing her features. Her brow was furrowed too as if she couldn’t quite figure Betty out, and there was a fogginess to her expression, an abstraction that Betty attributed to the liquid courage she’d consumed before her prolific performance. Also, uncharacteristically, Veronica Lodge looked a little small standing there, barefoot, her fingers wound around the straps of her heels, the wind whipping her dark hair into her face. She looked a little small and a lot beautiful and Betty hoped the strange feeling she was feeling wasn’t written all over her face. For reasons she did not understand, she didn’t want Veronica to catch it in her countenance, hoped that it would pass by unseen, a secret she could easily keep from herself, something to pass off as a consequence of oxygen deprivation, malnourishment, temporary insanity or a combination of all of three.

“Seriously, Ronnie,” Betty insisted as the older girl studied her, oddly ashamed by the pleading note in her voice. “I’ve got a sweater inside. I’ll be fine.”

“And your corset is about to fall off,” Veronica answered coolly, her voice giving nothing away. “You know I’m always happy to give the people a show, but I don’t know how they’d feel if they saw the squeaky clean Betty Cooper topless.”

Betty flushed yet again, and cursed herself yet again for washing off the Queen of Scots heavy foundation before walking outside. “It’s not completely undone. It won’t fall off. C’mon, Veronica.” She tried for stern and ended up landing halfway between petulant and worried. “You’re shivering.”

Veronica didn’t reply, and for a series of long, drawn-out seconds there was only the sound of the wind, distant traffic and the murmur of conversation emanating from the hall behind them. There were the sounds and the weight of Veronica Lodge’s gaze. She stared at Betty, curiosity and something like comprehension coalescing in her eyes, and the younger girl fancied she’d never felt so exposed in her life as she did then, standing in the parking lot, one hand handing holding out her denim jacket, the other holding her corset in place, with traces of white makeup framing her pink cheeks.

Veronica gazed at Betty, or maybe through her, and then, when the silence started to grow increasingly unbearable, she laughed. Veronica laughed, harsh and grating, an almost anguished sound, and Betty was left to wonder if she was just messing with her, like she had done before, like she did to everyone.

“Well then, when you put it like that, I can hardly say no.” Veronica’s voice was smooth, sarcastic and faintly amused, and whilst her eyes were glassy with intoxication, they were not unfocused. Betty was pleased to see this. She hated the thought of her hopping on a bus without at least some of her wits about her. “And they say chivalry is dead.”

Betty laughed then too, a relieved grin curling her lips. “I think we can safely assume that chivalry is dead and gone, but hopefully common decency can make a comeback.” It was, Betty would agonise in hindsight, such a corny thing to say, especially to someone as cool as Veronica Lodge. Mercifully, she followed it up with a far less corny, “Here ya go, take the jacket. Seriously, Ronnie, you’re making me cold just standing there.”

In response, Veronica Lodge smiled gently, reached out and took Betty Cooper by surprise, as she had done so many times that day. With her fingers encircling Betty’s wrist, Veronica pulled the younger woman towards her and pressed a firm and fleeting kiss to her lips. It happened so quickly, so unexpectedly and for a moment, the denim jacket was forgotten, the coarse fabric folded into their bodies and Betty was aware of the warm softness of Veronica’s body against her own, the smell of her hair, a chemical twang of the industrial grade hairspray softened by the subtler, earthier scent of coconut, and of course, the taste of the older girl’s lips, scotch whiskey and the sweetness of her cherry lip gloss.

It was everything all at once, and then, inconceivably, it was over. Veronica pulled away, released Betty’s wrist, pulled the denim jacket out of her hands and took a couple of unsteady steps back.

“Thanks, Cooper,” Veronica remarked, sounding amused and largely unaffected by the kiss, and yet her body was saying something else entirely. She was flushed, breathing harshly and her hands were trembling a little. “For the jacket. I’m seriously about to freeze my tits off.”

Betty didn’t speak, couldn’t. She could only watch, tongue-tied and pink-cheeked, as Veronica as shrugged the denim jacket on, collected her backpack off the back step and took off across the carpark in the direction of the bus stop. Betty heard a telltale clink of glass as Veronica did this, saw her stumble a little and knew what it meant. Veronica Lodge wasn’t just a little tipsy, she was fucking wasted. She had performed Chopin flawlessly, like the piano was an extension of her body, and she’d been plastered the whole fucking time. She was, as Betty’s mother used to say, drunk as a skunk and surely that could be the only reason why she—

“Cooper!” Veronica was half way across the parking lot when she called out to her. Betty had been lost in her thoughts and not realised that she was leaving, weaving between the parked cars, cutting a path across the checkerboard of light, hadn’t noticed that she was moving further and further away from her.

“Betty, tell me,” the older girl called again and turned to face Betty, a wild cast to her voice, rocking back on her heels with her arms thrown out at her sides. She looked like she was asking for a hug from 30 feet away. “Tell me—“ Veronica did an extravagant twirl, nearly fell on her ass and caught herself at the last moment, a mad grin on her face. She appeared, for a split second, like the little girl Betty imagined she’d been all those years ago, all mischief and mirth. “How the hell do I look?!”

Veronica’s dark hair was falling out her up do, obscuring her face and cascading down the smooth expanse of her exposed chest. In the waning sunlight, her skin looked almost golden and she was laughing; Betty could hear it in her voice and see the broad smile on her face. And then there was her outfit, a heinously expensive scarlet dress incongruously paired with Betty’s scruffy years-old denim jacket, studded with Girl Scout and school band badges. She was wearing the dress, the jacket, her hair resembled a bird’s nest and she was so very drunk. Veronica was a goddamn mess and it made no sense why Betty’s heart was beating so fast, why her palms were sweating, why her face felt hot and why she couldn’t find the words to tell her how she looked. Not just beautiful, even though that was the God’s honest truth. Not just beautiful but something else entirely. Something not quite of this world. She looked—

“Like you need a cab!” Betty hollered back, not the words she meant to say, certainly not what she was really thinking. “Are you sure you’re gonna be okay?”

Veronica laughed, a cackle that clawed its way out the back of her throat. “Fuck you, Cooper!” she called across the parking lot, shaking her head to herself. “I’ll be just fine!” And with those words, Veronica was turning away from Betty, continuing her unsteady progress across the lot, feet bare and head bent in concentration, her backpack swinging off one shoulder with her momentum. 

Betty watched her go, and found herself wishing that she’d been braver, bolder, that she’d said what she was thinking. She found herself wishing she could go back in time, a mere thirty seconds or so, and tell Veronica the truth. She wished for that, and other alternate realities. In one, Betty goes after her, shucks off her own heels, hops on a bus and makes Veronica Lodge laugh for real, without it sounding like it hurts. In another, Betty and Veronica don’t leave the concrete steps. They laugh and trade stories as the sun bleeds into the horizon. Miraculously, no one bothers them, not even when the winners are announced. They later learn they’ve both been ruled out of the competition, disqualified for reasons unknown, and Betty realises that she doesn’t mind, not one bit, and that winning is a relative term.

“Betty!”

At the sound of her name, the teenager startled and nearly toppled off the concrete step.

“Betty, what on earth are you doing out here without a jacket?” Alice pushed open the door of the school hall and stared at her, her gaze disbelieving. “And why in God’s name is your corset undone?”

“I…” Betty found she had nothing to say. There was no explanation. She was famished and exhausted and thinking strange thoughts. Truth was, Betty felt a little bit sorry for Veronica. She felt sorry for her and was mistaking pity for other incomprehensible, impossible feelings. And then there was the kiss…it had been confusing, it’d caught her off guard and Betty certainly wasn’t to blame for that…

“Betty?”

“Sorry, Mom. I just…” The young woman shook her head, as if to cast off the shackles of inconvenient thoughts. “I came out for a breather and lost track of time.”

“Without a jacket?” Alice’s face twitched. She loathed her daughter like this: aimless, lost in her head, unreachable. “Never mind that, get up, come inside and here, take my blazer, before you expose yourself and throw away all our hard work.”

Betty obliged, shrugging on the blazer, her mother’s chain mail, and resisting the urge to look back. If she had, she would’ve see Veronica Lodge sitting at the bus stop, barefoot, a lone figure bathed in the spotlight of the fluorescents, swinging her legs back and forth.

She was just a kid, waiting for the bus to come.


	2. The inherent (dis)grace of falling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: references to drug use

**_November 2016  
_ **

Veronica would not remember much of her first year out of high school. Splitting her time between New York and Riverdale, she made a conscious choice to be as big a fuck up as her parents—a tall order, certainly, but a challenge she was nonetheless willing to accept.

Her days were for sleeping off hangovers. Her nights a blur of booze, sex and pills, although she tried to make sure the latter didn’t turn into a habit. Pills gave her vicious cotton-mouth the morning after, a raw throat and the vague and disconcerting sense that she had said things, done things, that she would not have otherwise permitted.

Veronica stayed at friend’s houses as much as she could manage, only returning back to the mansion at Riverdale, where her mom resided, as a last resort. In the year of 2016, Hermione Lodge barely noticed her daughter flitting in and out of the house. She could be seen outside at any given time, come winter or summer, sitting on the huge lawn on a deckchair, her eyes hidden by a pair of heavy shades, her steel drink bottle beside her. She filled it with gin and soda every morning before going out to sit on the deckchair, a magazine or book tucked under her arm, reading material that she never really seemed to get around to reading. Instead, Hermione would stare up at the sky…or maybe, she would doze. It was hard to tell with those heavy shades concealing her dark brown eyes. Sometimes, on the rare occasions she was home, Veronica would watch her mother from her bedroom window, wondering what on earth she was seeing, if anything at all.

Then there was her father’s penthouse in New York. Veronica’s last visit was on the night of 3 November 2016, after which she resolved never to go back again. Being the address to which he was bailed, Hiram Lodge was forced to remain there each and every night for the latter half of 2016. Before the charges and the trial, before the Lodges’ world had been turned upside down, Veronica could count on her father being absent from the penthouse at least four nights a week. Most of the time, she’d have the place to herself and even managed to throw a couple of real sweet parties in his absence. That was back before Riverdale; in the days when Hermione lived in a separate apartment on the Upper East side, where she hosted dinners, luncheons and innumerable charity events. But everything changed after the police dragged him away in handcuffs some two years ago. Hiram had made that abundantly clear on the night his daughter, reeking of booze, had showed up on his doorstep.

“I didn’t buy the property in Riverdale for nothing,” he’d hissed at the door, his face white with fury, lips a thin pale line. Veronica imagined he was feeling particularly ambushed in that moment, having received no warning from the doorman of the building. She had sweet-talked him before entering, showing him her ID and explaining that she was desperate to see her dear old dad. The kindly old man, upon realising who she was and identifying the state she was in, had hastened to accommodate her request, escorting her up to the 21st floor before bidding her farewell at the elevator. He probably thought she’d be welcomed with open arms, not with her father insisting: “You’re supposed to be living with your mother. You’re supposed to be going to school!”

Veronica had been about to tell him that she had graduated the year prior, when she spotted the figure of another person through the doorway, moving through the penthouse.

“Is someone else here?” she asked, leaning to one side to peer past her father. He shuffled to block her view, his face now turning from white to red.

“That’s none of your business,” he said gruffly. “You should’ve called. You can’t stay here tonight, I’ve—”

“Where the hell I am gonna stay then?” Veronica stared at him, a belligerent expression taking shape on her face. The straps of her dress were falling down, her designer handbag hanging off her shoulder and her mascara was starting to run. Veronica had dressed to look like she was 21 and believed she was pulling it off, yet if she could’ve seen herself standing there, she would’ve been terribly embarrassed by the thin veneer of her pretence. She looked like a little girl dressed in her mother’s makeup and clothes, like she was just playing a part, and she was playing it poorly. “Don’t tell me you’re gonna throw your only daughter out on the street. It’s 10pm, Dad. I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

She could tell he was furious with her. She’d boxed him in, left him with no choice but the most undesirable one. Reluctantly, Hiram Lodge had opened the door and wordlessly ushered his daughter into the living room, a little hurriedly, a stony expression on his face. He bid her be quiet and stay put before leaving the room without another word. A little bewildered, feeling rather exhausted, Veronica allowed her body into sink into the sofa’s soft embrace, all the while listening intently to the sound of voices from her father’s bedroom. They sounded like they were arguing, her father and the woman in the other room, and Veronica found herself wondering if she’d totally cockblocked her father, because it kind of sounded like it. The thought brought a smile to her face.

Eventually, after 10 minutes or so, just as she was beginning to doze off, Hiram and the woman emerged from their bedroom and entered the living room. In the years to come, Veronica would recall the meeting with a great, unwelcome clarity. The woman her father was “entertaining” was very young, no more than year or two older than Veronica, clad only in a silk lavender dressing gown, her hair dyed a deep reddish brown and cut just below her shoulders. The makeup on her face was thick and applied with clear and careful intention. Veronica knew (from experience) that the girl had put on it to make herself both beautiful and seemingly much older than she actually was. The woman (or girl, whatever you wanted to call her) was trying to smile at her—a counterfeit smile, so brittle that Veronica fancied she could reach up, touch her plum lips and feel her expression shatter beneath her fingertips. She was also, much to Veronica’s consternation, impertinently pretty, so much so that the younger girl couldn’t help but be attracted to her, attracted and intimidated and utterly repulsed, all at once.

As if from a distance, Veronica heard her father making the necessary introductions in a brusque voice, being sure to emphasise that his daughter was only staying for one night. She managed to glean some information from his remarks (the woman’s name was Cindy; she was a good friend of Hiram’s; they’d met through work and _really_ hit it off), but in truth she was barely listening. She was too busy examining the odd pair. Her father, graying and going to seed, the bald patch on the back of his head ever-expanding, his pot belly poking out over his designer trousers. Cindy, beautiful, brittle and so very young.

Veronica realised then that she hated her father. She could not deny the feeling in that moment; it rose in her like bitter black bile, hot and viscous, searing the lining of her stomach, burning the column of her throat and blackening the chambers of her heart. She loathed him. Hiram Lodge was arrogant, selfish and fucking girls less than half his age, girls young enough to be his daughter, for heaven’s sake. He did not love Veronica. He could not. He simply lacked the capacity to put anyone else before himself. And Veronica could not stand him. She hated him. She pitied him. Part of her would always love him. The dissonance was a knife in her gut. It hurt so much.

Veronica left before dawn the next morning. She raided the liquor cabinet before departing—taking an expensive-looking crystal flask of single-malt whisky, an unopened bottle of Grey Goose and a small baggie of white powder she’d found on the second shelf on the cabinet, hidden behind a half-full bottle of overproof rum. Her father had left his wallet on the kitchen bench. Veronica swiped the $300 she found in there before turning to precious Cindy’s Gucci knock-off handbag. Out of curiosity more than anything, Veronica pored through her purse. Cindy was 22 years old. In her licence photo, her hair was a dull, mousy brown and she was trying not to smile. Veronica imagined she must’ve been stoked to get her licence, that a triumphant grin had been trembling at the corners of her lips as she stood before the camera, trying and failing to keep a straight face. Veronica ended up stealing the $15 she found in her purse and a loyalty card from a cafe in lower Manhattan. Cindy had earned herself a free coffee and Veronica was damned if she was gonna let that bitch enjoy it.

Her memory of the three nights that followed her last, abortive visit to her father’s penthouse were patchy. Much of it was lost to her. Veronica remembered crashing at her friend, Adrian’s flat in downtown New York. She recalled Adrian letting her in only after she’d showed her the special little baggie she’d swiped for father’s liquor cabinet. She was pretty sure they had sex. She couldn’t quite remember that part, but did have a dim memory of an intolerably early trip to the pharmacy for Plan B in Adrian’s van, which reeked so strongly of weed she figured she was high by the time they arrived. Best of all, Veronica remembered the fury. It kindled inside her for those three nights, fed by the fuel that was her hatred for her father. Oh, how she hated him. He was selfish and sick and…sometimes Veronica couldn’t distinguish between what she felt for her father and her own self-loathing. Sometimes, it felt like they were one and the same. Seamless.

On the morning after their third night together, Veronica and Adrian decided to take a trip to Riverdale. Veronica had no clue how that decision had came about. Perhaps Adrian was keen to get rid of her and knew the best way was to drop her off at her mom’s house. Or maybe he just felt like driving, which was not out of character for him. Adrian had an internal beat that seemed to get faster with each passing day. He was acceleration personified, a man hellbent on hurtling towards his own demise. With his mane of long, lank dirty blonde hair that fell past his shoulders, broad array of tattoos (most done professionally and a couple of very questionable home jobs) and patchy beard, he tried for hipster and fell way short, ending up at hobo. Veronica did not love him, romantically or otherwise. She wasn’t even sure she liked him, but they understood each other. Adrian and Veronica wanted the same thing, after all. Oblivion.

The trip from New York to Riverdale seemed to pass in a blink of an eye. One moment, they were driving through city streets, dwarfed by towering skyscrapers, the next they were passing over the Rockdale County line, the old faded sign welcoming Veronica home, as it had done so many times before. Veronica half-expected Adrian to take her straight home, but before they could get far into town, he was pulling into a Trader Joe’s, saying he was starving and wanted donuts and Red Bull. It was his usual fare; Adrian ate junk and never seemed to put on a scrap of weight, much to Veronica’s chagrin and incredulity. Not that she was really had any reason to be jealous anymore. These days, she was barely eating anything at all.

Veronica was half-tempted to wait in the car for Adrian, not certain she could be bothered walking around the supermarket, but eventually decided to accompany him. She was thinking she could do with a drink as well, hopefully something warm. It was fall and she was cold. Adrian’s van didn’t have a functioning heater and she’d been huddled under a smelly blanket from the backseat for most of the trip. She’d come to regret that decision, as trivial as it seemed at the time.

They took a shopping cart even though they didn’t need it. Veronica hitched a ride on the front while Adrian steered. At one point, they tried to reenact the iconic scene from Titanic. Veronica (Rose) stood facing forward, balancing on the front bar of the cart, arms outstretched on either side of her as Adrian (Jack) ran beside her, one hand on her waist while the other guided their vessel. They drew giggles from a couple of kids in the aisle, giggles that crescendoed into full bodied laughs as the wild couple gathered speed down the freezer aisle (too much speed to stop) and Veronica cried out in a dramatic and affected voice “Jack, I’m flying!” as Adrian started to bellow “ _Come Josephine in my flying machine! Going up she goes! Up she goes!”._

It was hilarious right up until Adrian steered them into one of the glass freezer doors. Veronica took the brunt of the collision, smashing her knees agains the icy glass surface before falling to the floor with all the grace of a sack of potatoes. Their audience, a boy and girl of elementary school age, let out twin gasps of shock and clapped their hands over their mouth as watched the cart careen into the glass doors, culminating in an overturned shopping cart and Veronica Lodge sprawled on the supermarket floor beneath the too-bright lights, groaning in pain, her skirt hiked up to her waist. Seconds later, the children fled the scene, running as fast as their little legs could take them, as if they might be implicated in Veronica and Adrian’s reckless behaviour simply by laughing. Veronica saw two pairs of small, scuffed sneakers run past her, but Adrian didn’t seem to notice their departure. He was focussed on Veronica, caught between amusement and concern as he approached his fallen partner in crime. 

“Oh babe,” he murmured softly as he lifted her off the floor, a sympathetic grin on his face. “That’s gotta hurt.”

She shrugged off his apologies as she limped out of the aisle, leaning heavily on the shopping cart. They eventually picked up a 4-pack of Red Bull and a 6-pack of glazed strawberry donuts for Adrian, who offered to shout Veronica something to eat, perhaps feeling guilty for his poor steering in the freezer aisle. Veronica declined. The supermarket lights suddenly seemed overly bright, painfully so, and she felt a little nauseous. She didn’t think she could stomach anything, not even a warm drink. Veronica just wanted to go home, back to the Lodge mansion on Pine Close, take some Tylenol and sleep for a very very long time. Maybe she’d feel better when she woke up. Not so fragile, sick and shaky.

Adrian and Veronica drew looks as they made their way to check out. She knew people had started to recognise her. Notwithstanding the fact that the residents of Riverdale were about as subtle as a bus crash, either staring at her openly or sneaking not-so-surreptitious glances, Veronica knew this because she too identified some of her observers. There was Bruce Sinclair who worked at the bank. His son, Terry Sinclair, a quiet, bookish boy, had been in the year above her at school. Bruce glanced briefly at Veronica, then took a very obvious double-take as she limped awkwardly past him on her way to the registers, his expression one of open concern. Macy Lloyd, a 60-something retiree, fervent Republican and local busybody, fixed Veronica with a critical, contemptuous glare as she and Adrian passed and could be heard loudly proclaiming to the girl serving her that “money cannot buy class”, before she launched back into her dissertation on why Donald Trump was going to win the upcoming election, her words only serving to deepen the bored, glazed look on the young woman ringing up her groceries. Then there was Ayesha Farooqi. She and Veronica had been in the same year at school. Veronica saw her raise her eyebrows as she passed by her, surprise etched on her features, and couldn’t help but wonder what it was about her appearance that elicited that response from her former schoolmate.

As always, Veronica was slightly rankled by the attention. Adrian, on the other hand, was positively delighted and amused by all the fuss. “You’re a celebrity!” he stage-whispered as they approached a register, pulling up behind an older woman who had just finished up loading her groceries onto the conveyer belt. Veronica made a flippant remark about it being one of the perks of living up in a small town, but even she knew it was more than that.

Ever since Hiram had been arrested, the Lodges were a fruitful source of gossip and speculation in Riverdale. On a slow day, all they needed to do was grab a copy of the New York Times and there would be at least one article following the trial of Hiram Lodge, disgraced former CEO of Lodge Industries. From there, the gossipers would go onto to discuss Hermione, repeating rumours that she had developed agoraphobia and was terrified to leave the house. After that, of course, they would turn their minds to the wild and wicked Lodge daughter, a party girl with an addictive personality and penchant for promiscuity. Veronica a significant reputation, one that meant she was attributed with many things that she couldn’t possibly claim credit for: breaking up the Sullivans marriage right before their 20th anniversary, selling the Reverend’s daughter the bag of weed he found in her school bag on the 4th of July, spreading gonorrhoea amongst the high school population, and so on and so forth.

It was an impressive rap sheet for which Veronica felt an absurd mix of astonishment, pride and defiance. She’d long since decided that she had no qualms about being the villain the Riverdale residents desired so desperately. They would never know the truth. They didn’t deserve it. Veronica figured she’d let them revel in their ignorance and moral superiority. _What a fucking sad life they are doomed to live_ , she reflected privately. _Truly pitiful._

As Adrian stacked Red Bull, donuts and chewing gum onto the sedately moving conveyer belt, Veronica found herself feeling increasingly woozy, a pounding headache building steadily behind her eyes. It could have been the lack of sustenance, the heavy fall in the freezer section or even the effects of the massive three-day bender she had embarked upon with Adrian. Either way, Veronica felt like crap; her stomach was churning unhappily and she could perceive small squiggles at the periphery of her vision, a sure sign of an impending migraine. Feeling her mouth pool with nauseous saliva, Veronica bent over, plucked a cold bottle of water out of the display in front of the registers and placed in on the conveyer belt, hoping that maybe a cool drink of water might help.

“That too,” she murmured quietly, prompting Adrian to look down at her.

Furrowing his brow, he quipped, “You gonna buy that, V? ‘Cause I ain’t paying for water when we’ve got empty bottles in the back of the van that you can fill up at the gas station.”

 _What a fucking cheapskate,_ she thought with bitter exasperation, resisting the urge to kick him in the shin. He could be such a dick at the most inconvenient of times. Trying and failing to suppress her anger, Veronica inhaled deeply before responding, her eyes fixed on the sedate progress of the dirty conveyer belt. “I feel sick, Adrian, and I’ve left my purse in the car. Can you just buy me some fucking water so I don’t yak all over you? Fuck me. You’re a real class—”

“Aw, V, you gotta learn how to relax,” Adrian’s interjected with an easy laugh as he slung his long, tattooed scrawny arm around her narrow shoulders and looked down at her, his face creased into an infuriatingly indulgent grin, visible through the locks of his dirty blonde hair. Veronica felt her body tense at his touch, her ire rising and headache amplifying. “I’ll buy you your water, babe,” he cooed in a faux baby voice, giving the scant flesh at her hip a rough squeeze before treating her to a light pat on the bum. “Don’t say I don’t ever do anything for you.”

It was something Veronica would not have permitted in ordinary circumstances. She did not suffer condescension, no Lodge did, but of course Adrian had caught her at a moment of weakness, had likely seen the sickly pallor to her face and known he could get away with a couple of undefended jibes. Closing her eyes momentarily, Veronica centred herself, exhaled the breath she had been holding and focussed on holding back the waves of nausea that assailed her. _Concentrate on getting back to the van. Get to the van and then you can get home._ Veronica repeated the words like a mantra. _Get in the van. Get home. Hop in bed._

_Van._

She could put up with Adrian for a little longer. She could suffer the condescension, just this once.

_Home._

The drive home wasn’t long. 10 minutes tops. She’d be home before she knew it.

_Bed._

Veronica decided to raid the medicine cabinet when she got home. She’d knock herself and sleep for as long as she wished. She seriously contemplated never leaving her bed again. She’d sleep and eat until she was as big as Gilbert Grape’s mom. They have to burn the house down with her dead body in it.

Satisfied with her plan (perhaps not the last part), Veronica opened her eyes. She opened her eyes and, to her considerable surprise, found herself face-to-face with a girl she recognised immediately. There, standing behind the register, was none other than Betty Cooper, dressed in ain garish Hawaiian shirt offset by the small red name badge pinned to her left breast.

Veronica was very surprised, shocked even, in a way that she certainly not had been upon seeing Bruce Sinclair, Macy Lloyd or Ayesha Farooqi. She had no reason to be. Veronica knew Betty was still in town. She’d heard Riverdale’s sweetheart had got into Julliard and deferred for a year so she could work and save up enough money to supplement her partial scholarship. Apparently, she had just missed out on a full ride.

It was therefore no great revelation to see Betty here, amassing her college fund in Trader Joe’s, and yet Veronica was utterly taken aback by her sudden reappearance in her life. So much so that, for a moment, she simply could not believe that she was standing there before her.

At 19 years old, Betty Cooper was as infuriatingly pretty Veronica remembered, maybe even more so. Her light blonde hair was pulled back from her face into a high, slightly curly ponytail, her complexion as smooth and unblemished as ever but for the faint constellation of freckles on bridge of her nose and apples of her cheeks. Her eyes were a darker blue than Veronica recalled, more startlingly owing to their deeper hue, a slice of the sky at dusk, just as the stars were starting to appear. Also, the Hawaiian shirt they’d give her was way too big. Betty was practically swimming in it, the sleeves nearly brushing her elbows, and the effect was strangely endearing. Veronica felt a most peculiar rush of affection at the sight of her, standing there in her too-big work shirt, a fleeting emotion that vanished the moment she caught sight of the expression on Betty’s face.

She looked revolted. There was no other way to interpret it. Her upper lip was curled and her nose crinkled, like she had caught a whiff of something going bad in the fridge. Veronica didn’t need to wonder at what or who was the source of her ire. She was staring straight at Veronica and Adrian standing arm and arm by the slowly moving conveyer belt, revulsion and something like disdain written all over her face. And still (somehow) she was gorgeous, lovely even, a beauty that persisted in spite of her disgust etched on her features.

In Veronica’s mind, they stared at each other for a very long time, but in reality could only have been a fraction of a second before the older of the pair looked away, stung, her gaze fixed resolutely on a sticky patch of the shop floor. She studied it with a desperate, pained scrutiny as she tried to stave off the sickening heat rising in her body, a rush of hot shame that flared at the pit of her stomach before spreading to her chest and cheeks, where it blossomed into a fierce, scarlet blush.

And Veronica felt very small indeed. She felt small and sad and dirty. Not the kind of dirt you can scrub away or dig from beneath your fingernails. It was dirt of a deeper, more permanent kind. The kind that wasn’t so much under your nails as it was under your skin, invisible to the naked eye, something that was felt rather than seen. Veronica had felt it before of course; it was always there in the background, a constant companion, but rarely was the sensation as acute as it was right then in that moment.

She knew it ought not to hurt this much. Why should Veronica care what the pretty and pious Betty Cooper thought? They were not friends. She was just some kid Veronica had gone to school with, a girl who had resented her from day dot, when she showed up on Archie’s arm after meeting him in a party in the city. So what if Betty was disgusted by the sight of her? What did it matter to Veronica? They weren’t in each other’s lives anymore. Veronica wasn’t losing anything. She had absolutely nothing to lose…and yet that wasn’t quite the truth. Something was stirring in the recesses of her memory; she could see a parking lot and a sun-dappled, gum-spotted flight of concrete stairs, could hear the sound of laughter, her own and someone else's, taste whiskey on her tongue and, most vividly, feel a body pressed against her own, the coarse fabric of an old denim jacket crumpled between them.

Hot tears blistered the back of Veronica’s eyes, her chest constricted and throat seemed to swell shut. _So weak_ , she thought, hating herself, loathing the memory, drowning in the bittersweetness of it all. _So stupid_. Veronica’s headache intensified. She felt sicker than ever. There was something sticky on the shop floor, she was looking right at it, congealed chocolate milk or maybe a haphazard splash of coffee. God help her, she’d only come in for a goddamn hot drink. She’d come in for a hot drink, crashed into a fucking freezer and was about to have a breakdown in front of Betty Cooper, pure and perfect in way she’d never be.

“Ronnie?” Veronica heard the soft, concerned inquiry in Betty’s voice. The worry seemed real, utterly uncontrived, but Veronica knew better. She’d seen the look on her face. She had seen it and she could not un-see it, no matter how much she might’ve wished to. “Ronnie, are you okay?” Betty’s asked, her voice rising, growing sharper. There was an edge to her tone now, something that sounded a little like fear. “Your elbow is bleeding. Do you need—”

“I’ll meet you outside, Adrian,” Veronica interrupted in an abrupt, mechanical voice, not looking up, not daring to. Stiffly, she walked away from Betty and Adrian, past the shoppers checking out at the registers and through the automatic doors of the exit.

The world opened up before her. The day had been stubbornly overcast and bleak on the drive there, but now the clouds were clearing and it was as if the sun itself were cleaving a massive rent in the sky, exposing a bright, crisp expanse of cornflower blue. There were puddles in the parking lot of Trader Joe’s, muddy and opaque, yet now they were transformed, glimmering and reflecting the sky, making it appear as if the parking lot were studded with pockets of sky, the universe expanding in both directions. Veronica knew it must’ve rained earlier, for everything in sight gleamed—the railings, the hoods of the cars, the damp bitumen—water catching the light and throwing it back it her. It was indisputably and awfully beautiful. The contrast nearly killed her.

How could the world be so bright, the day so glorious, and she feel still like this?

Veronica shakily made her way across the parking lot, making slight detours to step into the gorgeous basins of sky, disturbing the glassy surfaces until they looked as grubby as she felt inside. Her sneakers and socks soaked, a trail of disruption in her wake, Veronica reached Adrian’s van. She hadn’t asked for his keys and therefore could not get in by herself, instead opting to close her eyes and rest her back against the dusty white van. Leaning back, Veronica turned her face blindly to the sky. She could feel the sun on her face, and that was okay. It was okay. It would be okay…if she could just contain this feeling, this rot, if she could just hold it in a little longer, until she was home and maybe…

“What the fuck, V?” Adrian’s voice was loud and affronted. Veronica did not open her eyes. He might’ve been a mile away. “Why’d you run out like that? Your little friend was asking me about you. Like I’ve got any clue—”

“We’re not friends,” Veronica interjected in a quiet, cool voice. “She’s just some kid I knew from school. Thinks she’s better than everyone.”

“Whatever.” She could hear the irritation in his voice. “D’you want your water? You sure bitched about it enough.”

Veronica nodded, accepted the bottle of water, cracked the seal and took a long, deep draft as Adrian hopped in the van and leaned over to open her door. Slowly, feeling as if she had lead running through her veins, she climbed into the van and was immediately confronted with the inexplicable sight of Adrian holding out a handful of paper towels to her.

“For your elbow,” he explained as she accepted the proferred towels, her expression bemused. “I don’t want you getting blood all over the seats. Your not-friend gave it to me. She also told me to make sure you’re okay. It’s just a graze, is what I said to her,” Adrian continued as he started the ignition and shifted the van into gear. “We both know you’ve suffered worse.”

Veronica had. She was suffering worse right now. W _hy had Betty done that, asked about me and given Adrian paper towel?_ she wondered, then figured it was probably pity. The thought made her heart sink. She didn’t want her pity. She hadn’t asked for it. Robotically, her mind elsewhere, Veronica pressed the paper towel to the graze on her elbow and felt nothing at all. There was no pain. All she could feel was a distant, dull weight bearing down on her chest.

When they pulled outside the Lodge mansion, Adrian let out a low whistle of appreciation. Clearly impressed, she listened to him gush about her home as she reached behind her seat to grab her overnight bag. As he spoke, Veronica realised that she was really fucking sick of hearing his voice. He was so full of bullshit. She was glad to be done with him, for at least a little while. With her bag in her lap, she turned briefly to say goodbye, only to find Adrian leaning over her, one hand moving to her thigh whilst the other slid behind her nape to pull her in for a hard kiss. _How presumptuous_ , she thought contemptuously as he held her, but didn’t try to pull away. The fight had gone out of her. Veronica let herself go limp in his embrace and waited until it was over.

When Adrian pulled away, he stared as if seeing her for the first time, a perplexed look etched on his features. “Don’t be a stranger,” he said in an uncharacteristically quiet voice as she climbed out of the car. In reply, Veronica simply raised a hand in parting, shut the door and turned her back on him, fixing her gaze on the thicks bars of the automatic steel gate and the long, steep driveway beyond.

After keying in her security code and passing through the gate, Veronica embarked upon the climb up the Lodge’s steep driveway, which cut through a thick glade of maple and oak before leading up to the modern and imposing house on the hill. She had made the trek so many times before: post-school, physically and mentally drained by the day, her backpack hanging off one shoulder; after a night of underage drinking, tipsy and giggling, surrounded by a gaggle of school-age girls; seething with fury in the days after her dad’s arrest, stomping up the driveway, hating her parents, loathing their weakness, so incandescent with rage she was convinced she was leaving burned footprints in her wake.

This trip was different. She didn’t feel anything at all. Nothing but the weight on her chest. The trees passed in a rich haze of apricot, vermilion and soft buttery yellows. Her body moved without conscious effort, carrying her up the driveway and through her front door, her soaking shoes leaving damp footprints in her wake—not the burn marks she had envisaged once upon a time, but hey, it was something.

When Veronica entered the house, she heard the sound of conversation coming form the living room. At first, she believed it to be her mother talking to another person and felt a momentarily wave of surprise cut through her numbness. Her mother was entertaining again? How extraordinary. However, Veronica soon realised that she was mistaken. Hermione Lodge was entertaining no one. No one but for the figures moving on the 36-inch television screen that bathed her ageing face in its shifting, kaleidoscopic light. She had drawn the blackout curtains, plunging the room into semi-darkness, leaving the television as the sole source of illumination. Veronica watched her mother from the doorway, studying the way she perched on the edge of a sofa, a glass of clear, carbonated liquid in one hand, the other clutching the sofa cushion, clutching it so tightly that Veronica could see the whites of her knuckles from where she stood, the bones straining against her brown papery skin.

“Your father’s going to take the stand,” Hermione murmured faintly, her voice expressionless, breaking the silence. Veronica wondered how she had known she was standing there. Her mother’s eyes hadn’t moved from the screen. “The arrogant prick.”

On the television, many miles away, Hiram Lodge rushed out of Court and down a flight of concrete steps, flanked by an entourage of impressive bodyguards, a hoard of press pressing on all sides. They gathered like a pack of starved carrion around a rotting carcus, the periodic flash of the cameras making it appear as if her father were walking a staccato step—there one moment and gone the next, his face appearing and disappearing, contorted in one flash, smooth and controlled a moment later. His suit was expensive. The rings on his hands ostentatious. His fake tan conspicuous and contemptible. He screamed wealth and privilege and remorselessness. He was an arrogant prick. Veronica hated herself for loving him in spite of it all, hated the way her heart contracted at the sight of his frantic flight.

“He’s going to bring us all down with him,” her mother continued in that same dull, heavy voice, her hand gripping the sofa cushion like flotsam in a stormy sea. Her eyes were glassy. She swayed a little on the spot. “He won’t stop until he has.”

Veronica thought they were pretty down already. Rock bottom couldn’t be far away. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. She was so tired of falling. Perhaps there would be some kind of relief, a chance to rest, when she finally hit the ground.

Silently, dripping blood from her elbow onto the pristine white carpet, Veronica entered the room, sat down beside her mother and prised her white knuckled fist from the sofa cushion. It fit easily between her own, even felt small by comparison. She realised then that she had not held her mother’s hand for a very long time, not since she was a little girl, and was surprised by how fragile it felt between her fingers, as delicate as the splayed wing of a bird. It fluttered beneath her clasped hands too, as if tempted to take flight, prompting Veronica to tighten her grip, determined to stick with her during the fall, loving her as hopelessly as she loved her father.

Shutting her eyes against her father’s garish indignity splashed across the 36-inch plasma screen, Veronica breathed in…and then out. She breathed in and out. She focused on the tempo of her breathing. In and out. In. Out. And just like that, reality receded and Veronica fancied she could feel the slightest gust of wind on her face, felt her stomach tighten and her limbs tense, perceived the plummet on the very edge of her consciousness and couldn’t help but smile a soft, grim smile to herself.

Oblivion awaited.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a bleak chapter, but necessary for the story. The next one will be a far lighter. 
> 
> Thanks for all the sweet words on the last chapter! I'm so pleased you liked it.


	3. Escape hatch (no vacancy)

**_August 2017 and a bit before_ **

For Betty, college was freedom.

It was her perception way before it became her reality. When life in Riverdale started become unbearable, untenable, Betty held tightly to the idea, her fist white-knuckled on the handle of her only feasible escape hatch, desperately holding on. And so she did her time at Riverdale High, aced her SATs, nailed her Julliard audition and woke up one morning to find freedom folded into a a crisp, white envelope sitting in her mailbox.

But before all that, came the work. Betty Cooper worked herself to the bone. Late nights and early mornings. Weekends spent poring over voluminous textbooks whilst the rest of her cohort partied. Friends fell away. Betty spent inordinate amounts of time in libraries, smelling the comforting musk of old books against the crisp, chemical smell of cleaning products and new plastic. She came to adore those hallowed spaces, they encompassed a different kind of quiet: the murmur of muted conversation, faint beep of barcode scanners, soft tread of feet and the quiet clips of fingers on computer keyboards. That space, those sounds, the smells—they offered the peace Betty couldn’t seem to find anywhere else, not at school, certainly not at home, and in her senior year, it proved to be just what she needed, a kind of sustenance and succour for the soul.

When not in the library, Betty practiced furiously either in the studio at school or very quietly in the garage at home, conscious not to disturb her father, carefully plucking the strings of her guitar, eliciting sonnets so soft you could be mistaken for thinking they were the product of memory or perhaps even a haunting refrain from a half-remembered dream. Such was her preoccupation, Betty missed family dinners, skipped meals and lost weight. She was a woman on a mission, possessed by purpose, her feet walking the yellow-brick road, eyes fixed firmly on the City of Oz.

Betty got into college with the offer of a partial scholarship. Even then, it was too much for her family to afford. The pharmacy was going under, debts amassing steadily and the college fund mostly spent on propping up the failing family business. In any event, the fund was never intended to pay the price asked for by a school such as Julliard. In truth, it had never been intended for Betty at all. The youngest of the Cooper children was far too pretty for college, a beauty queen; Alice Cooper had been operating under the misapprehension that her daughter would settle down with a nice, sensible boy from a good family.

And so it was with shock, perplexity, annoyance and the barest hint of pride that Betty’s parents learned that their youngest daughter had been offered a chance to study a Bachelor of Music in Julliard. It would take Alice and Hal Cooper a little time to adjust to the idea. Fortunately, they would get that time. After two rounds of extensive discussions and negotiations with her admissions advisor and coordinator of the music program, Betty managed to defer her enrolment for a year, after which she picked up two jobs: the first on the register at Trader Joe’s, the second on the reception desk at a local mechanic.

Again, Betty worked hard, picking up extra shifts, starting early and staying back late. She was relentlessly reliable, be it when she was scanning on the register or taking calls at the reception desk. And for the most part, Betty was good at her jobs, although her mind had a tendency to wander away from whatever monotonous task she had been assigned. Sometimes, she mulled over the past, but most of the time, Betty dreamed of the future, of escape, of a life in New York without her mother’s unattainably high standards or her father’s ridiculous curfews and arbitrary, oppressive rules.

It had taken time for Betty to recognise that her father’s rules were…a little overzealous, to say the least. For a long time, she had accepted his peculiarities as normalcy, only realising as she passed through adolescence that there were several things set him apart from her friends’ fathers. The curfew alone was not terribly unusual, although stricter than most. The insistence that she dress modestly was a bit archaic, but not uncommon for God-fearing, conservative Christian patriarchs. Yet there were so many other things: the stipulation that his daughters leave their doors open except for when they were getting dressed; the demands to know the passcode on their phones and computers; the keen inquisition he conducted when they arrived home a little later than foreshadowed. It was harder still for Alice Cooper, although Betty’s mother made a point of never complaining about, or even acknowledging, her husband’s controlling behaviour.

It got worst when Polly moved in with her fiancee on the other side of town. When that happened, it was just Betty and her parents. Just Betty and Alice doing what they had done so often over the past two decades: walking around the house on eggshells, hoping not to upset Hal, who had grown ever more capricious and controlling as the family sunk into debt.

Betty did not speak of this side of her father to anyone. To the people of Riverdale, Hal Cooper was an affable, mild-mannered and soft-spoken pharmacist. He was kind, gentle and unassuming man of very few words. He was well-loved within the town, the last person you would consider cruel or controlling, and yet that was what he truly was. Betty prayed no one would find out. Maybe a little of her mother's shame and self-preservation had caught and she was more like her than she thought, hamstrung by a desperate need to keep up appearances. Or perhaps she simply wanted to believe in the facade, because there were times when it was so easy to do so: when Hal was laughing his soft, warm chuckle at something silly a customer had said or crooning hymns in church in an unexpectedly lovely baritone, his face a mask of serene devotion. Those were the times that Betty felt a pained sense of pride for the man that was her father—a twisted, desperate, hopeful creature of emotion that clawed at her chest and made her feel heartsick and breathless.

Unsurprisingly, given her strained home environment, Betty did her best to stay out of the house, picking up extra shifts and hunkering down in the library. She could have stayed at friends’ homes, but instead choose to distance herself, making a conscious decision not to put any effort into maintaining the relationships she had built over her many years in Riverdale. Why invest in something she was going to leave behind anyway? In truth, part of Betty was already gone. Physically, she was in Riverdale, taking calls at the auto-shop and ringing up groceries at the supermarket. Yet in spirit, she was somewhere, and someone, else entirely.

Perhaps this was the reason why Alice Cooper clung so desperately to her daughter in the year before she left for college, as if she could sense her distance and abstraction. Even when Hal gave Betty his blessing to go to college, Alice continued to wage her campaign to have her daughter remain home, starting with loud expressions of doubt and concern: doubt that Betty could fund her tuition and living expenses, concern that the city was a dangerous place ill-suited for a pretty young woman such as her daughter. When this did not work, Alice suggested that Betty delay her degree and stay home to earn a little more money—a tactic Alice fully intended to deploy year after year until Betty gave up on the whole silly notion of attending college altogether, her resistance and ambition worn smooth like a jagged crag against the relentless assault of the sea. When _still_ her daughter remained resolute, Alice held impromptu get togethers for Betty, inviting all her friends and family around, as if the mere presence of these people might convince her daughter to put some roots down and decide that Riverdale wasn’t so bad after all.

Hence the party.

Alice did not call it a farewell, despite the fact that she had decided to hold it three weeks before Betty was due to leave. To call it a farewell would be to admit defeat, and Alice Cooper would not concede so easily. Instead, she called it a soiree, fashioned it as a block party of sorts and invited everyone around. Every person who had a connection to Betty, no matter how tenuous, was sent an invitation. To save money, Alice forewent catering and cooked herself, committing herself to days of preparation, to slaving over the stove and mixing bowls and keeping a careful eye on the food coming in and out of the oven. There were hors d’oeuvres: pastry pinwheels with sundried tomato and basil pesto, blinis with smoked salmon and dill creme fraiche, and skewers of an assortment of grilled vegetables and meats. She made cupcakes too: mudcake, raspberry and white chocolate, and orange poppyseed, the latter being Betty’s favourite flavour.

The yard was transformed. Alice convinced Hal to mow the lawn (it had become overgrown, reaching the middle of Betty’s calves) and proceeded to carefully wind strings of fairy-lights around the hills hoist, the old maple at the back of the yard and the tyre swing as well, suspended from a maple branch by frayed and weather-worn rope, so old it looked just about ready to snap and finally free the tree of its decade-old shackle. The effect was to render these drab and commonplace landmarks into something beautiful, provided the lights were switched on and the ambient light was dim.

Alice spent hours gardening, doing the best she could to bring back some semblance of order to the neglected veggie garden and overgrown mass of purple love grass by the back fence. She would emerge from the backyard at dusk, her glasses askew, hair a tousled golden halo about her head, bloody nicks on her hands and forearms and a bright, healthy flush to her cheeks. Betty had not seen her mother look so happy in a very long time. She figured it was excitement for the party, but eventually came to understand that it had more to do with the heady satisfaction of a job well done. Alice Cooper had now been out of work for two decades, ever since she had married Betty’s father, and had started to remember what it meant to work hard, step back and behold the efforts of your labour.

Betty helped as much as her mother would allow, but for the most part, she simply stayed out of her way. Besides, she had other things to do. There were forms to be filled out and submitted. Classes to be selected. Accomodation to be arranged. With each passing day, Betty felt more distant, like she had one foot in New York already, and part of her wanted to impress upon her mother that this party, get together, whatever she wanted to call it, was in every sense a farewell. Betty wanted Alice to know that she _was_ leaving. She needed her to know that her mind was made up.

On the morning of the party, Alice got up before 5am to vacuum and mop the floors, wipe down all the surfaces and clean the bathrooms. Soon after that, around 7am, she woke her daughter up and directed her to start cooking the food that she had not been able to prepare in advance, permitting her bleary-eyed and sleep-befuddled daughter to have a quick shower before reporting to duty. Mother and daughter spent the rest of the day in the kitchen, performing a delicate dance of evasion and assistance as they wove around each other in small space, tasting food, seasoning where necessary and nodding in approval. To Betty’s surprise, she found herself enjoying these preparations, even allowed herself to feel some excitement for the upcoming festivities. It would be fun. She knew that. Her mother had put so much effort in, Betty couldn’t imagine it going down any other way.

And then Hal got home from work and everything went to shit.

It started with the vial of perfume he found in Alice’s handbag. Surely nothing sinister could be deduced from such a small, innocuous object, but of course Hal found a way. Betty and Alice were sitting at the kitchen counter discussing their favourite Grey’s Anatomy episodes and waiting for the last batch of pinwheels to bake when he entered from the dining room holding the tiny vial aloft, as if he had struck upon a nugget of gold, bitter and brutal triumph etched all over his craggy face. At the sight of him, the two women stiffened and, in unison, each turned to regard him, eyes wide and bodies tense, alert and wary, a doe and her fawn cautiously regarding a new threat, or rather, an old one. Somehow, they knew the score, knew it without him having to speak a single word and, for a fleeting moment, Betty fervently wished that it would all turn out to be a simple misunderstanding. She prayed for a quick and painless resolution of whatever grievance he had unearthed, knowing that it was pointless, understanding that if life had taught her one thing, it was that prayers went unanswered.

“D’you think I’m stupid, Alice?” he asked, as if the premise of his question was self-evident, but of course it was not. “D’you wanna tell me who you’re tryin’ to impress?”

Alice tried to laugh it off at first, all nonchalant-like, but her voice was too high, her laughter a little chaotic, her smile a touch deranged, lips stretched across bared teeth. This, of course, did not last long. It never did. Soon enough, she had stopped laughing and started pleading, speaking rapidly in a strained and plaintive voice, her words tripping over each other in their haste to get out of her mouth, insisting that it was just a perfume sample, that it didn’t mean anything and that she would never do _that_ to him.

Hal called her a liar. He demanded the truth. There was no reasoning with him. Betty found herself wishing she wasn’t such a fucking coward. She wished for the courage to stand up to him. To do something, say something, anything. But she didn’t do a goddamn thing. She couldn’t seem to persuade her shaky legs to stand up. She had lost her voice. She tried swallowing, moistening her dry mouth and throat and still, the words would not come. Instead, Betty watched her mother transform before her eyes, to the point where Betty scarcely recognised her, this fragile woman—meek, mild and coming apart at the seams. It was there in her placatory smile, which rippled like the disturbed face of a once perfectly-smooth lake. It was in her eyes: wide and fearful with blown pupils, caught in the headlights of the juggernaut she had the misfortune to marry—Hal Maurice Cooper riled up and on a roll. Betty saw it too in the tremor of her hands. She’d make them into fists. Yet even then they would not be still.

The argument reached its crescendo when Hal flung the vial of perfume across the kitchen in a blind rage and stormed out of the room. It exploded against the steel kitchen splashback (a detonation of glass fragments and the heady aroma of Chanel No. 22) and left a little scratch on the steel surface, an engraving that looked a bit like a fishing hook. In the aftermath, Alice was forcedto throw out a batch of cupcakes, not wanting to serve mudcake with a garnish of glass and spritz of perfume. Meanwhile, Betty swept up the glass in a pair of old flip flops, wincing at the too-strong scent of Chanel No. 22: sweet and floral with the barest hint of musk. Hours later, when their guests arrived, Alice would spin a story about the scent, explaining how she’d dropped a bottle of perfume, laughing at her own clumsiness and joking that she now had the best smelling kitchen on the block. Betty would not know whether her resent or admire her mother’s capacity to rewrite history—something she did with conviction and flair, fixing the script with artful, elegant calligraphy.

After that, well, it was pretty much impossible for Betty to muster up any excitement. She wanted her mother to call the whole wretched party off, pull the plug and let them all lick their wounds in peace, but Alice seemed determined to plow on as if nothing had happened, the aftermath of the confrontation revealed only by the persistent, lingering tremor of her hands. In turn, Betty obediently showered, dressed and applied some light makeup, readying herself for the party, her stomach in knots, her heart feeling heavy and sick in her chest, her hands _still_ reeking of Chanel No. 22 (she wondered if she’d ever get the smell out).

Their guests started to filed in at 5pm. By 7pm, the party was in full swing and Betty was utterly exhausted. She had down the rounds: chatted briefly with her band friends, laughed with her old cheerleading team and struggled to hold a conversation with great aunt Gwyneth, who was hard of hearing and exasperated with small talk. She had approached the latter reluctantly at the stern insistence of her mother, and engaged in a laborious discussion that seemed to cause them both more grief than it was worth.

The evening was unseasonably warm for August. It was the first thing Betty wold recall most keenly from that night—the suffocating feel of her dress plastered to her skin, the perspiration slicking her brow and the slow, almost painful trickle of sweat down the column on her spine. The second was the sorrow. At once, she was saturated and suffocated by it, a feeling that pressed down on her from all sides just as it seemed to come from from a place inside her, seeping through her pores and soaking her skin. If anyone noticed it, that sorrow in her dark blue eyes, they might have attributed it to the kind of sadness that goes hand in hand with farewell and they would be wrong. Betty was not sad to leave—she was desperate to. Her dream of escape kindled her heart, fire in her chest, her hope that things could only, would have to, get better than this. It was a dream that gave her great joy and also a terrible, crippling shame because she knew that, at its heart, it was an act of cowardice.

Betty was running away. Not just that, she was leaving her mother behind.

“Betty?”

Startled from her thoughts, Betty jumped, sloshing some of her diet coke from the glass tumbler onto the pavers of the Coopers’ outdoor area, which was crammed people seated in temporary tables and chairs clustered around the barbecue from which Hal cooked burgers, the air redolent with the smell of fat and heavily seasoned mincemeat.

“Crap,” she cursed quietly, studying the front of her white dress for any evidence that she stained the fabric before carefully placing her dripping glass on the ground.

“Language, Betty,” her father cautioned from where he stood before the barbecue, his apron spotted with grease.

“Sorry, Dad,” she murmured as she took stock of her surroundings, trying to identify the source of the voice that had called her name. A quick glance revealed her usually-empty backyard crammed with people. In the half-light of dusk, she could see her neighbours, friends and a couple of family members milling around the patchy lawn. To her right, she spotted the daughter of her neighbour from across the road, no more than six or seven, peering into their overgrown veggie patch with great interest. To her left, people stood beneath the lit-up hills hoist that rose from the earth, its branches stripped bare of the last load of linen and clothes and there, right down the back, she even saw a couple of folks sipping punch by the old tyre swing, which somehow managed to look beautiful and otherworldly strung up with all those fairy lights.

“Betty!”

Betty caught the voice again and, this time, was able to instantly identify the source. Striding across the outdoor area was a tall, young man with a mop of unruly red hair that stuck our at tufts around his ears. He was smiling broadly at her, excitement evident in his gaze, and Betty could see that he had just finished speaking to her mother, who stood watching his progress across the yard with a small, knowing smile on her face, a gifted bottle of merlot clutched in her hands.

Not quite knowing what to say, her hands dripping soda, Betty gave a small wave of acknowledgment and a mustered up a weak smile as Archie Andrews approached. She was taken aback by the genuine interest written across his face, and even more so when he stepped into her space and swept her into an enthusiastic embrace, lifting her up until the toes of her sandals just barely skimmed the ground.

The hug caught Betty off-guard. It also seemed a bit presumptuous. They hadn’t spoken in over a year; a conscious choice on her part. They had been very close once upon a time. For most of grade 10 and and part of 11 if Betty recalled correctly. Back then, it had all been so exciting. Not just exciting, but fresh and pure and innocent. In those days, something lovely had blossomed between Archie and Betty: a mutual crush and later a fledging romance, and for a time, Betty had been utterly enamoured by Archie Andrews. His confidence and bluster. His sense of humour and roguish, wild grin. She relished the time they spent together, but most especially their walks home, during which they’d stop by the corner store, where Archie would buy them a bag of peanut butters cups to share. They would devour them on the trip, eating until they were sick, laughing until their bellies were sore and walking until they feet ached, always taking the long way around, stretching out the moments, savouring them.

And then Veronica came to town. Two became three. Archie stopped walking her home in favour of hanging around Ronnie, trying desperately to catch and hold her attention, chasing after this beautiful, self-possessed and mysterious heiress, who was more a woman than a girl in every respect. Betty knew she could not compete with her. Those few times they hung out as a trio, she felt small and juvenile in comparison, and the crush she had, once a source of comfort and pleasurable anticipation, seemed nothing more than a silly, shameful, one-sided thing. In the months after Ronnie’s arrival, the Archie Betty knew slipped away by degrees before disappearing entirely. She stopped hearing from him, saw him only briefly at lunch at school and it wasn’t too long after that before the rumours started—whispers of the Andrews boy with the Lodge girl, murmurs of them dating, the salacious story of Archie’s mom walking into his room to find the two of them in a state of undress.

Betty blocked Archie on all her social media accounts after hearing about that last story. She was embarrassed and hurt enough as it was without having to see photos of them together. In addition to obliterating him from all her social media, Betty made a promise to herself that she would ignore Archie should he try to squirm his way back into her good graces and so she did just that when he tried to get in contact with her again a month or so after he and Ronnie had broken it off.

That was the last time they’d had any contact.

And now Archie was nearly suffocating her in his embrace, as if they were long lost friends, reunited at last. It didn’t make any sense to Betty. Had she forgotten a more recent interaction with Archie? Had they recently mended things? She thought she’d remember something like that. Perhaps he had misinterpreted something—a small gesture, a look in passing? _Or maybe…_ Another possibility rose and took shape in Betty’s mind as she studied the backyard over Archie’s shoulder. Her mother was still watching them, that same small smile on her face, looking like the cat had got its cream.

And Betty knew.

“It’s been so long!” Archie exclaimed as he set Betty back down on her feet none too gently, causing her to stumble slightly. “Sorry!” His were hands on her shoulders, steadying her, an apologetic grin forming on his features. “Ah crap, I didn’t mean to nearly knock you off your feet—”

“It’s okay, Archie,” Betty murmured, regaining her balance and stepping back slightly, just out of his reach. “You just caught be by surprise, is all. I didn’t really expect to see you here.”

“Well,” he began, smile broadening and corners of his eyes crinkling, “I thought it was about time we caught up. Y’know it’s been way too long.”

Yet Betty was not sure she did know. If she was being honest, she would admit that she had not thought much of Archie Andrews since she decided to cut him out of her life. Which wasn’t to say that he did not mean something to her: he was her first crush, first kiss, first real feeling of butterflies and her very first heartbreak. Those pivotal moments mattered to Betty, they always would, but she was content for them to reside in the realms of memory. She did not need to relive or recreate those moments, nor did she want to. It was okay to leave some things, people, in the past.

“Has it?”

“It has,” he confirmed, as confident as ever, and led her away from the people clustered around the tables, from the aroma of the barbecue and the hum of conversation.

They didn’t go far. Just onto the front porch. There, they spoke a little about high school, of how their lives used to be, reflecting upon those long walks after school, the salty sweet taste of peanut butter and chocolate on their lips, along the sun-dappled sidewalks, the variance of light making it seem as if the earth were moving before their very feet. Talking to him, being up close, Betty was reminded of just how gorgeous Archie Andrews was, a real knockout, in his way. It was any number of things or perhaps the combination of them: the shock of his reddish-gold hair, startlingly cerulean eyes, cheeky smile and faint dusting of ginger along the defined line of his jaw.

There was also, to Betty’s surprise, a softness to Archie’s expression when he looked down at her: something like nostalgia and a trace of regret too. The thing her mother had said, whatever it was, had taken root and blossomed in his mind. One look at his face, that softness, and Betty knew he was psyching himself up to apologise to her.

And so he did. 

“I’m sorry, Betty.”

It was all so predictable.

“I’m really sorry it ended the way it did, before we really even started, which really sucks if I’m honest, ‘cause you…” He lost his nerve then, or perhaps words simply failed him, and Betty would recall how the silence seemed to swell, filling the space where his apology ought to have been, broken only by the distant hum of the party, faint chirrups of crickets and clatter of dishes emanating from the kitchen—a quiet that continued until Archie mustered the nerve to speak again. “I—I was a dick. I shouldn’t’ve done what I did… The way it went down it was all wrong. I—”

“It’s okay, Archie.” Betty came to the rescue with a gentle interjection and a rueful smile. Becauseit was okay. She felt no animosity, not even an echo of the pain she had once felt. Betty had been a girl when it happened, after all. Back then, she had adored the idea of Archie, the look of him and the way he made her feel when he regarded her. To think she had once believed the sum of those things was love. “It was a long time ago. We were just kids.”

“Not so long ago,” Archie demurred in that same hopeful and hesitant voice voice, and Betty could feel the weight of his gaze on her face, studying her profile, scrutinising her expression.

“It feels like forever,” she admitted; it was true. The whole mess between herself, Archie and Veronica felt like old news, an adolescent drama played out in the initial acts of their existence. They were adults now, or at least, they were about to be.

“It doesn’t feel so long ago when I’m here sitting next to you, Betty,” Archie declared and Betty couldn’t help but smile, for it was such a lovely and romantic things to say, lovely and romantic and far too late. “I was thinking, I mean, your mom said you hadn’t decided whether you wanted to go to college or not, and well…I was thinking that if you stayed—”

"Archie,” she interrupted, exasperated now, not willing to allow this to go on any longer, “I am going to college.”

“But your mom said—”

“She’s in denial.” Betty turned to look into his face, noting his earnest and crestfallen expression, and couldn’t help but wonder what lies her mother had fed him. “She doesn’t want me to go. She’s dictated every little thing in my life since I was a baby and now she wants to write the rest of the story too, but I’m not letting her. I refuse to stay in Riverdale. I won’t do it.”

“You make it sound like a terrible place.”

“It’s not a terrible place,” she sighed, the ire fading from her tone, her face angled towards the slight breeze blowing through the front garden, “It’s just not the place for me anymore.”

“You seem…sure.” Archie observed after a moment’s hesitation, looking down at Betty with a wry smile as he leaned against the front rusty railing of the porch, his broad forearms dislodging tiny flakes of dry white paint, which floated gracefully to the wooden deck below, gathering around his sneakers like fallen snow. “It makes me regret stuffing things up in the first place. I was stupid back then. I honestly don’t know what I was thinking, back when I fucked everything up and ignored you. I should’ve know Veronica was trouble from the start—”

“Archie.” Betty shook her head and clenched her hands into fists around the rusty porch railing, sending another small deluge of snow-white paint flakes to the well-worn deck. She didn’t want to talk about Veronica, didn’t want to think about her either. Thinking about her, wondering how she was, achieved nothing. She’d gone down that rabbit hole before. “You know it wasn’t her fault.”

“I’m not saying it is,” he assured quickly, “It’s just that compared to you, well, she’s nothing. Especially now that she’s hanging out with deadbeats and strung out half—”

“She’s not nothing.” Betty’s voice came out louder and sterner than she intended and she felt strangely wounded by Archie’s offhand remark, as if his criticism had been levelled at her instead of Veronica. “Don’t say that.”

“I said: s _he’s nothing compared to you_ ,” he emphasised, sounding bemused and a little affronted, perplexity crinkling his brow. This wasn’t going the way he intended. “You’re taking what I said out of—”

“That was always your problem, Archie,” Betty cut in again, voice calm and cold, words clipped, an iciness that was at odds to the anger bubbling inside her, boiling, making her chest feel hot and tight. “The comparisons. Comparing us to each other as if we existed to compete for your affection. And now you’re doing it again, saying all these things about Ronnie…”

And as she spoke, in her mind’s eye, an image unfurled: Veronica as she had last seen her, standing on the other side of her register at Trader Joe’s, wan and pale with a stark trickle of bright red blood running down her arm. Her hair was loose and tangled, a dark mass falling down thin shoulders, and she’d lost weight. There was no denying it; the oversized flannel and distressed black jeans hung off her bony body, making her appear so very small. Betty remembered that she was trembling a little beneath the arm of her revolting boyfriend (Aidan or something), an unkempt guy with a straggly beard, mane of dirty blonde hair and a cruel sense of humour. Betty loathed him on sight. It wasn’t just in the way he spoke to Veronica, so disrespectfully, goading her, but also in the way that he looked at her, with a kind of lazy, hungry possessiveness that made Betty’s skin crawl.

“…spouting the same shit everyone in town is saying, ‘cause they’ve nothing better to do but bring people down.” Betty looked up at Archie, her expression at once reproachful and quizzical. “I just don’t get it. Like, you were together once. Don’t you care for her at all anymore?”

Their eyes had met in Trader Joe’s, just for a moment, a moment in which Betty thought she saw a wounded look appear on Veronica’s face, something dark and despairing, like she really was nothing—there for a moment and gone the next, leaving in its place a face as smooth and unblemished as polished stone. Afterwards, Betty was left to wonder if she’d imagined that look, left to wonder if she had caused it, left to agonise and pick the scene to pieces, left to do it all over again and over again in her mind, to get it right just one time.

“Betty, I—no, I don’t,” Archie replied as if it were obvious, sounding more confused than ever. “It was just a fling. Besides, y’know she strung me along for ages before dumping me for some other guy. To be honest, I don’t feel anything for her anymore. Why should I?”

It was a good question. Betty struggled for an answer that made sense, feeling muddled and unsettled by the memory of her last meeting with Veronica. “I just thought…well, I…I guess…”

“You may have thought it was more than it was. A lot of people did, but it was honestly just a fling,” he explained gently, a look of indulgent sympathy on his face, speaking as if he were explaining a difficult concept to a petulant and jealous child. And Betty was suddenly reminded of why she was not remotely interested in Archie Andrews anymore. He could be such a condescending ass when he wanted to be. “Anyway, c’mon Betty,” he coaxed, “let’s just forget about Veronica. Y’know I didn’t come here to talk about her.” 

_If only it were that simple,_ the thought rose unbidden in Betty’s mind as the wind picked up, tossing her hair into her face and eliciting a peal of song from the wind-chimes that hung around her front porch—the low, hollow notes of the wooden chime complimented by the high, tinkling sound of the glass chime, which reminded Betty a little of falling rain. It was a comforting sound, something to listen to whilst she pondered why she could not forget Veronica. Thinking music, her grandmother would call it—and that was exactly what Betty was doing. She was thinking about a girl who had only ever caused her grief. She was remembering her and marvelling at the inexplicable richness of those recollections. It didn’t make sense that they should be so clear in her mind, as if it all happened yesterday, the totality of their timeline condensed into a single day.

Take, for example, the image of Veronica strutting down the school corridors, drawing the collective gaze of her peers and never seeming to give a shit. Beauty blended with such effortless, enviable confidence. A killer combination that seemed to give Veronica her own gravitational pull. The boys were evidence of that fact, distant and not-so-distant planets that orbited around her at lunch and recess, doing anything to get a little of her light. Even Betty felt her pull. Sometimes (often), she couldn’t help but watch her, small surreptitious glances at school that she prayed no one would notice.

Several years later, Betty observed a very different Veronica standing on the other side of the register at Trader Joe’s. The confidence was gone, replaced with a despair so thick and viscous that Betty felt it coating her skin, fancied she could almost taste it when she breathed in. The pull was still there too, but this time it was different—all gravity and no light, a sun gone collapsed supernova. Betty would have done pretty much anything to make her smile in that moment. Instead, the opposite had happened. She had done or said something wrong. And like a skittish, hurt animal, Veronica had run away before she had a chance to make it right.

The last thing Betty remembered was something that ought to have landed somewhere in the middle of that day of memory, but it didn’t. She always remembered it last of all. It happened at the pageant. Just another damn pageant and yet…it wasn’t. It wasn’t just another pageant because of how it ended, with that strange and wonderful hour spent in the parking lot behind the school hall, a time during which an unlikely ceasefire was implicitly agreed upon by Betty and Veronica. This was a memory of such poignant bittersweetness that Betty made a point not too dwell on it too often, lest the frequency of her remembering have the effect of dulling its shine.

“What did you come here to talk about, Archie?”

He turned to her, a wayward lock of burnished copper hair falling into his eyes, hope, fondness and vulnerability written all over his face. Betty knew what he was going to ask. She had wished for this moment enough times to recognise it coming to life. It was just her luck that it should happen now, when she was well over Archie, about to leave town for college and…caught up thinking about someone else.

“Betty,” he said solemnly, “I came here to talk about us.”

Archie left minutes later, confused and crestfallen by her response, taking his leave from the porch and marking a slow and steady path back up the road. Betty figured he didn’t care to stay for the rest of the party and felt guilty at the relief she felt at that realisation. She probably should’ve offered him a ride home. She still could—he hadn’t gone that far. Yet Betty did not call out for him. She simply could not bring herself to do it. Instead, she stared out at the empty street, watching the wind whip the fallen leaves into a frenzy, and found herself craving a cigarette. It was something she’d been doing a lot more lately: smoking. It had started at parties, a social smoke here and there and slowly became something more, something to take the edge off, to make life just a little more bearable.

It was a bad habit. Betty knew that. She figured she deserved to have one. Hell, the way things were, it was surprising she didn’t have a whole lot more. She was a pretty good daughter, all in all. Obedient. Understanding. An exemplary student. Hard-working. Optimistic…except for those times when she was super fucking depressed, but Betty was very good at hiding that. She had learned from the best, after all.

“Betty?” Her mother calling her, following by the sound of the screen door creaking open. “Betty, what on earth are you doing out here all on your own?”

 _In other words,_ Betty thought with an internal eye roll, _what on earth are you doing out here without Archie Andrews?_

“I dunno, Mom,” she replied blandly, not bothering to turn around. “I guess I’m watching the leaves. Look,” she gestured to the leaves on the road, which moved to and fro with the restlessrhythm of the wind, “they’re dancing.”

“Oh for goodness sake, Betty.” Her mother huffed with unconcealed frustration. “Hurry up and come inside. Lord knows I didn’t throw you a party so you can stand on the front porch and watch leaves on the road.”

“And why did you throw me a party?” Betty asked, keeping her back to her mother, knowing that she would lose her nerve if she had to look her in the eye.

“I thought it would be nice,” Alice replied brusquely. “Obviously. Now come inside. You can fix your hair in the bathroom before going out to join everyone. Also, have you seen Archie around? I think his mother is looking for him.”

“You just missed him. He’s gone now.”

Betty found herself half-wishing she’d gone with him. She ought to have offered him that ride. It would’ve been a get excuse to leave the party and not come back for at least a half hour or so.

“Gone where?” her mother asked in a sharp voice. “He came with Fred and Mary. He can’t have gone far.”

“I think he went home, Mom.”

“Nonsense. Why would he—”

“You know why,” Betty said quietly, her hands tightening on the rusty porch railing, shoulders bunching with the effort. “Don’t play dumb. You put those ridiculous ideas in his head, about me staying in Riverdale and us getting together. I mean, seriously Mom, you thought that was a good idea? What did you expect would happen? That he would come out here, say his sorries and I would suddenly just give up on a college, buy a house in the suburbs and pop about a legion of little Archies?”

“You’re being absolutely hysterical, Betty,” Alice sighed, at once exasperated and disappointed. “And of course you had to cause a scene. Would it have been so hard to be polite to him? He’s a nice boy.”

“I was polite!” Betty protested, whirling around to face her mother, blue eyes blazing. “But I wouldn’t have had to be if you hadn’t put it in his head—”

“Lower your voice,” Alice hissed, her upper lip curling, the flash of her gritted teeth stark against her deep plum lipstick. “There are people inside. They are here for you and I will not have you repay them by making an utter fool out of yourself.”

“Oh c’mon, Mom,” Betty scoffed in reply, leaning back against the corroded railing and hearing it’s aggrieved groan of protest, half-wishing it would snap so that she could topple from the deck into the garden below. It would hurt either a little or a lot, but at least she would be free of this interminable exchange. “I think they’re being paid pretty well, don’t you? Free food and booze with a hefty serving of whatever gossip is going around—”

Alice moved so swiftly that Betty barely had a chance to react. She only meant to reach out and grab her daughter by the wrist. She was frustrated and acutely aware that Betty was speaking _much too loudly,_ at a volume that would allow some of the guests situated by the side gate to hear them arguing. She wanted only to make her daughter _be quiet and not cause a scene_ and was entirely unprepared by the reaction this elicited. Alice moved quick by Betty moved quicker. A flash of movement from both women and suddenly Betty was just out of reach of Alice’s grasping hand—arms curled to her chests, hands splayed before her, head ducked behind the shield of her upturned palms, blue eyes wide and watchful.

A pregnant pause. For a moment, Alice was stricken, her eyes locked on the sight of her cowering daughter.

“I wouldn’t…” she mumbled tonelessly, voice drained of emotion. The heat of the moment was gone and Alice looked completely lost at sea. Almost bereft. “You know I wouldn’t…”

“I know,” Betty replied in a small voice. She was suddenly sorry, but for what exactly, she could not say. It wasn’t anything to do with the lip she had given her mother. It was the way she had reacted when Alice reached for her. That wasn’t normal, to do that, was it? Betty couldn’t say for sure. “I know and…it’s alright, I’ll come inside.” She pushed herself up off the railing, which squeaked and shuddered with the force of her movement and pulled a lop-sided, watery smile onto her face. “I’ll even fix my hair.”

“Good…” Betty’s mother said vaguely, a faraway cast to her features, as if she had one foot in the present and another in the other reality unfolding in her mind. She was perfectly made up. Her hairwas framing her face in gentle waves made to look natural through hours of careful attention, her make up elegant and minimal: a touch of mascara and expertly applied eyeliner, just enough foundation to smooth her complexion, blush to rouge her cheeks. She could have made the front cover of a Better Homes and Garden magazine, a domestic goddess in all her glory, were it not for that unsettling vacancy in her deep blue eyes. “That’s good then…the guests are waiting for us.”

They walked inside together before going their separate ways. In the bathroom, Betty placed her hair in a high ponytail and carefully smoothed back any wayward blonde tendrils with the palm of her hand and a spritz of hairspray. She was going for perfect symmetry, something beyond reproach. She didn’t want to fight anymore. She just didn’t have it in her. Betty felt so far inside herself, like there were light years of space between her body and her soul. It was a feeling she felt with ever increasing frequency and intensity. The longer she stayed in Riverdale, the more her life felt like the Big Bang in reverse, all the essential parts of her contracting at an exponential rate, condensing to a single, distant mass of thoughts, feelings, regrets and desires—something buried so deep inside her she could not touch even if she tried.

“All done,” Betty proclaimed with false brightness as she walked into the kitchen, expecting to find her mother waiting impatiently for her. Instead, Alice was seated at the bench idly sipping a glass of red wine. She seemed lost in thought and her shoulders were slumped, an oddity for Alice Cooper, a woman who was ever insistent about maintaining a good posture, warning that slumped shoulders were the first step towards finding yourself sporting a Dowager’s Hump. Yet this was not the strangest thing about the scene before Betty—the most peculiar thing was her mother and that glass of red wine. Alice Cooper did not drink. Betty had always figured it was because alcohol wasn’t to her taste, but now she wondered if she might’ve been wrong about that too.

“Mom?”

“We’ll got out in a second.” Alice’s eyes remained fixed on the glass of red wine cradled in her hands. “But maybe we should…” Her mother paused, a flicker of pain passing across her features, a quick, almost spasmodic contortion of her face. Betty just managed to catch the expression and instantly wished she hadn’t. Seeing it felt like a sliver of glass pushed beneath her nail—a seemingly small wound, but gosh darn did it hurt a lot. “We should probably talk.”

“We don’t need to,” Betty said quickly, a sudden panicky feeling coming over her. She had a sense of what her mother wanted to talk about and years ago might’ve welcomed the conversation, but it didn’t matter anymore. It couldn’t. Not when Betty was already halfway gone and everything had been so broken for so long. “It’s fine, Mom. Really—”

“It’s not fine,” Alice insisted, her voice hoarse and hands a little shaky, causing her wine to slosh around in its expensive crystal glass. “Betty—”

“Betty!”

Two different people said Betty’s voice simultaneously. The first person was her mother, who was looking up at Betty with an expression she couldn’t quite place. The second person was her friend, Jess, one of the best tumblers from her high school cheerleading squad. Jess was leaning through the open doorway that led into the open planned dining room and kitchen, looking at Betty expectantly, her eyes alight with excitement.

“So sorry to interrupt, Mrs Cooper,” Jess blurted out as she stepped into the room, casting a brief glance at Alice before redirecting her gaze to Betty. “Betty, you need to turn on Channel 4. Or else check out the Facebook page. They’re streaming the press conference right now.”

“What press conference?” Betty asked, confused, her mind reeling from the rapid sequence of events. “I don’t—”

“Hiram Lodge, Betty,” Jess clarified and held up her phone, revealing a dull black screen. “I was watching it before my phone died. He’s talking about the jury’s verdict. Come on,” the young woman gestured impatiently, evidently frustrated by Betty’s lack of comprehension, “we were just talking about this earlier. The trial?”

Betty tried and failed to recall what had been said. She’d tuned out the majority of the conversation, nodding and making noncommittal noises of assent in lieu of paying attention. She vaguely remembered something about a trial, but hadn’t realised they’d been talking about Hiram. If she had, she surely would have listened a little closer. She was, in fact, quite interested in the high-profile trial of Hiram Lodge. It had stretched on for several years now, owing to the countless adjournments and innumerable pre-trial arguments. There was speculation that Hiram’s legal team wanted to draw it out. There had been reporting on the alleged intimidation of witnesses, most of whom were Hiram’s former employees, but nothing that could be substantiated. There were descriptions of complex, shadowy financial structures: tactical trusts and offshore bank accounts. More than one forensic accountant had been called by the State to give evidence, and there was definitely something dodgy about the way money moved in and out of the company, but would it be enough to convince twelve jurors? No one could be sure.

The trial had polarised the nation. Some bemoaned the persecution of robust canny businessman. Hiram Lodge was nothing more than a shrewd all-American capitalist who sought only to use his money to expand his business. There was absolutely nothing wrong with that. There couldn’t be. To prosecute a man for something so fundamental, so American…well, some might say it was blatant communism. Yet others loathed Hiram Lodge. He was a white-collared crook who paid his fancy, smarmy lawyers to let him get away with robbing honest, hard-working folk—not unlike the greedy fat cats who had taken and lended and invested with unscrupulous greed until the global economy had eaten itself alive. Nearly a decade had passed, but 2008 didn’t feel so long from where its victims were sitting. They wanted Hiram to rot in jail. They wanted blood.

Betty just wanted to know how Veronica and Hermione were coping. No one was reporting on them. She supposed that was a blessing, but she could not help but hope to catch a tidbit of information about the Lodge women. Surely they were suffering too.

“Alright then,” Alice interjected, breaking Betty’s reverie as she stood up and placed her now-empty wine glass on the table. “Let’s go see what he has to say then.”

“Thank you, Mrs Cooper!” Jess gushed and rushed to join Alice, who was making her way to the living room. “You won’t believe how old he looks these days. The trial has definitely aged him.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Alice responded, her voice crisp and cool, expression composed and aloof. She was back to her old self. The version Betty had seen in the kitchen table—the woman with the hoarse voice, shaky hands and brittle edges—was gone. Betty ought to have felt relieved, but instead she felt something more akin to disappointment, as if had allowed an important moment to slip through her fingers.

In the living room, without delay, Alice picked up the remote control and switched on the television, swiftly changing the station from FoxNews (Betty’s dad’s go-to station) to Channel 4.

And there he was. Hiram Lodge in all his glory.

He was standing before a lectern surrounded by a cluster of eager microphones, bobbing and jostling with desperate, eager movement. He had aged. This much Jess had not embellished. The last time Betty had seen Hiram, he had been a robust man. Tall and a little flabby around the waist with a thatch of thick, glossy dark brown that sat above his handsome, angular face—good looks that Betty had seen reflected in Veronica’s sharp features and high cheekbones. Betty recalled him as a brash and imposing man, but now he seemed…so much smaller than he had before. Granted, he had lost weight, a lot of weight, but it was more than that. It was a combination of many things: the weight loss, receding hairline, the streaks of silver in his hair, premature lines on his once-handsome face, his countenance cracked by the stress and strain of the drawn out trial. Where Hiram once wore his Armani suits with pride, the suits now wore him—hanging limply from his figure as they might hang from a coat hanger on a clearance rack.

He made them look cheap. He made winning look like defeat.

“Can you please turn it up, Mrs Cooper?” Jess asked politely, interrupting Betty’s focused scrutiny of the much-diminished Hiram Lodge.

“Yes, of course.” Alice’s eyes remained fixed on the television as she spoke absently, looking as transfixed as Betty had been a moment ago.

_“…it’s been a very long road,” a gravelly voice observed with surprising equanimity from the speakers. “This is just one step towards justice. My legal team and I will of course need to consider any kind of civil recourse that may be available; I’ve lost years of my life and time that could have been spent with my wife and daughter…”_

At then mention of Hiram’s family, the camera fixed on his face zoomed out slowly, revealing Hermione Lodge to his right, dressed in austere grey and black, her face unfathomable. In stark contrast to her husband, Hermione looked as if she had not aged a day. The camera lens settled on her briefly and, in that moment, you could be forgiven for thinking her a statue, her face expressionless, brown eyes without light or animation. She had always looked a little bit like this, Betty observed—tall, still and stonily silent, emanating a kind of flat, empty beauty.

Abruptly, the camera panned left, leaving Hermione behind to focus on the younger woman standing on Hiram’s left.

“Betty!” Jess exclaimed in an excited voice, grabbing her forearm. “It’s Veronica!”

And so it was. At the sight of her, Betty felt a little rattled. She could not explain why. Her chest was tight and she was breathless. Veronica was not like her mother. That was the first thing that Betty noticed. Her cheeks were flushed and her hair was windblown, fine dark tendrils whipping into her face. The collar of her dark coat was turned up against the chill wind. She appeared at once bored and exasperated with the entire affair—an expression that was so quintessentially Veronica the Betty cold not help but smile.

 _She looks so much better,_ Betty thought, remembering the last time she had seen Veronica—thin, miserable and shaking slightly under the arm of her boyfriend, Aiden. She was clearly healthier now, her face not so narrow and drawn, her eyes alight and alert. Watching her, Betty felt herself awash with a wave of cleansing relief. Even if she had not dared admit it to herself, Betty worried for her old enemy after seeing her that day in the grocery store. She’d worried that that Veronica might be ready to give up, feared that she had started to believe the terrible things people said about her.

“Better than what?” Jess asked curiously and it was only then that Betty realised she had spoken aloud and that both her mother and friend had turned their gazes of the television screen to regard her quizzically.

“I, well…” Betty stammered, at loss of what to say, or how she might explain herself. “It’s just that, when I last saw her, she ah, y’know…looked pretty rough.”

“Mmmhmm,” Jess hummed in agreement and nodded, evidently satisfied. “I heard that too. Really went off the rails there for while apparently. She looks okay now, I guess, but she could be completely high for all we know. You know what they say, Betty—you’re not a Lodge until you develop a substance abuse problem.” The young woman chuckled slightly and Betty felt angryand sick at the effortlessness with which Jess passed judgment, and annoyed with herself for contributing to that narrative, even if it had never been her intention to do so.

“That’s not what I was—”

“Shhhh!” Alice hushed Betty, gesturing to the screen, and both girls fell silent.

On screen, Hiram continued to bluster, thanking his legal team for their expertise and foreshadowing a “fantastic new project” he was working on, dropping a bunch of names that Betty did not recognise but assumed were important people. His arrogance and lack of self-awareness was astonishing, Betty thought. He had escaped criminal prosecution and potential incarceration by the skin of his teeth and already he was trying to rebrand himself.

After what seemed like an age, Hiram relinquished the microphone so that his wife, Hermione could answer a question. Hiram made way for her to approach the podium, handing her the microphone and slinging one arm around her waist, smiling warmly as he looked down at her. To Betty’s mind, the gesture was slightly off-putting, a touch too possessive, but if it bothered Hermione, you would not have known. A small smile was now fixed on her face. She seemed entirely unbothered by the media scrum before her and her husband quite literally breathing down her neck.

“It’s been very hard for our family,” she spoke smoothly into the microphone, her voice even and cool. “Very hard indeed. My daughter and I have had to move out of New York temporarily, what with the rapacious media interest, but I’m sure I don’t need to tell you about that,” she finished with an arched eyebrow, eliciting a mild titter of abashed laughter from the pack of reporters and cameramen. “It will be good to be get to normal,” she continued, her smile widening ever so slightly, “I’m sure you can imagine that we are all very keen to put this behind us and resume our lives.”

“And what about you, Veronica?” a voice called from the back of the pack of media, “Are you happy to have your dad home?”

Unlike her mother, Veronica did not wait to ushered into position. She leaned over her parents and spoke into the microphone. “Thrilled!” she exclaimed with faux enthusiasm and gave the crowd a toothless, sardonic smile and two thumbs up before stepping back into her position. The remark was offbeat and off-script and for a moment no one seemed to know how to react. Fleetingly, the smiling facade fell from Hiram’s face, his mouth twisting into an ugly, petulant frown. Meanwhile, Hermione’s smile faded, her face settling back into its implacable mask.

“Oh God, Ronnie,” Betty sighed with amused exasperation as she watched Hiram’s lawyer step back into the frame and declare the press conference at an end. “You just had to go and do that, didn’t you?” she mused quietly to herself, a silly grin taking shape on her face. Veronica had contrariness down to a fine art, Betty thought, and privately hoped she never changed, for that was one of the best things about her, something Betty admired even when she hated her: Veronica’s blatant refusal to conform. Her utter intolerance to bullshit. She could be a spoiled brat, a shameless showoff and huge pain in the ass, but at least she never pretended she was anything different.

Betty wished she could be half as real. She wished she could shuck off her secrets, cast off the weighty and painful deceptions, and embrace that kind of authenticity. Maybe when she got to New York. Maybe then, she could be a Betty Cooper worth knowing.

Having seen the press conference, Betty, her mother and Jess rejoined the festivities and it was a good thing they’d done their homework because Hiram’s acquittal was all anyone wanted to talk about. There was talk about whether the Lodges were going to sell their property in Riverdale and move back to New York. Some said it was a sure thing, others swore that Hermione and Hiram had been separated for years and that, should she move to New York, there wasn’t a chance in hell she'd live with him. There was speculation about a rift between Veronica and her parents, and chat about Hiram’s philandering ways. Apparently he had been sleeping with a Victoria’s Secret model. Betty let the gossip wash over her, determinedly not absorbing anything, and ended up spending the last hour of her farewell party sitting with her great aunt Gwyneth, not saying anything, revelling in the peaceful, undemanding silence.

In the days that followed Betty’s farewell party, Alice Cooper seemed to have a change of heart. Tentatively, she started to ask about Betty’s preparations for college, ranging from questions about what subjects she was taking, the books she needed and her accomodation. With each question, Alice grew increasingly brusque and matter-of-fact, yet there was a fragility beneath it all, an uncharacteristic vulnerability that belied her pragmatic and no-nonsense temperament. Alice had finally accepted that her daughter was leaving. Betty could not pinpoint when the change had occurred. More than likely after their argument, perhaps when her mother was sitting at the kitchen bench, cradling her glass of wine and struggling to find the right words to address the elephant in the room. Whatever the case, whenever it had happened, Betty was grateful. There would be no more pointless parties or prospective suitors thrust in her direction. No more guilt trips. She had her mother’s support and advice and it was only then that Betty realised how much she needed it. How much she missed it.

Three weeks later, Betty left Riverdale. She and her mother loaded up the old Camry with the remainder of her belongings and drove away, leaving their little pocket of suburbia, passing by her old school, Trader Joe’s and the park where she had knocked herself out on the monkey bars. What a saga that had been; Betty recalled waking up to the hysterical screeches of her classmates, all of whom were insisting to a very panicked teacher that she was dead. They drove past the diner where Archie had kissed her for the first time, leaning across the table of their booth to press a firm kiss to her mouth, his lips sweet with the residue of strawberry milkshake. Gosh, he had been brave and brash, even back then. Soon enough, they passed over the town limits and then, a little while later, they left the county.

And Betty was free, finally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: apologies for the delay and any factual errors. I'm not from the States and I'm sure there's a multitude of little tells in my work that make that fact obvious. Full disclosure: this will be a slow burn. If you're looking for a swifter kind of gratification, I will not be offended if you go elsewhere. Thanks for some of the lovely comments posted on here. I'm sorry I kept you waiting so long and hope you're taking good care of yourself.


	4. Spunk and steel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: references to drug use

**March 2018**

“Have you…” Veronica stopped, her throat dry.

She was making a point of not looking at the woman lying beside her. She would peer instead at the hotel ceiling. It was unblemished on first glance and riddled with imperfections on second. From where she lay, Veronica could see a spiderweb of slight cracks in one corner, a blotch of water damage in another and there, dead centre of the ceiling, a trio of divots hastily filled with sealant and painted over.

It had been Emily’s idea to stay here. A quaint bed and breakfast out of the city. She had cast it as romantic, but Veronica knew better. Quaint was another word for discreet. Romantic code for remote. Emily was taking extra precautions now that he was back in town. There had been a week of radio silence before Emily finally contacted her at some godawful hour of the morning, 2am… or was it more like 3am? Veronica couldn’t remember anything but saying yes. She would take what she could get. God help her, she was good at that.

Shifting slightly, trying not to squirm, Veronica cleared her throat and tried again. “Have you been with other women before?”

The younger woman was trying for nonchalance and coming up dreadfully short. Hesitancy had crept into her voice and, try as she might, she couldn’t seem to keep it out. Veronica fervently hoped that Emily wasn’t paying enough attention to pick up the feigned casualness in her voice.

The older woman let out throaty chuckle, clearly amused. “What do you think?”

“I…well…” Veronica tried to string a sentence together, her eyes studying a ragged cobweb in another corner of the ceiling. It moved with the waves of heat emanating from the air conditioner, inflating and deflating like a ghostly, transparent lung. “I think you probably have,” she finished after a pause, sensing the truth of her words, wondering how they made her feel.

“I have,” Emily confirmed and Veronica could hear the smile in her voice. “There were women in college, and some after too.”

 _Other affairs then,_ Veronica surmised, trying and failing to suppress the stab of pain she felt at the realisation. Emily and Henry had met in Emily’s second year at college and married a couple of months after her graduation. This meant that Veronica wasn’t an exception to the rule—she was the rule. Fidelity would have been the exception. She ought to have known, or even guessed. Emily was too practised at this, and Veronica wasn’t just thinking about the sex. It was the sneaking around. The clandestine meetings. Emily had it all down to a fine art. She booked all the hotel rooms, some expensive and others not so, and took Veronica out to dimly lit gay bars on the other side of town, where no one would recognise her. They never ate out. Unless you counted the serving of dumplings they occasionally shared on a drunken walk back to their hotel (Veronica didn’t). Also, Emily only ever texted Veronica on her work phone. She had confided in Veronica about her policy of turning it off when she got home each night—a habit easily interpreted as a determined effort to maintain a work-life balance, something to mark as a measure of Emily’s devotion to her family.

It was kind of genius…and also a lie.

“What about you, Miss Veronica?” Emily asked in an exaggerated southern drawl, her voice breaking the silence that had descended as Veronica withdraw into her thoughts. “Have you been with other women?”

“I…not really,” Veronica spoke slowly in a quiet voice, choosing her words carefully, her gaze remaining fixed on the ceiling. The rumpled bedsheet was pulled over her chest and tucked under her armpits. Her hair was a dark, mussed mass about her face. She could not decide if she felt sated or used, full or empty, content or completely wretched. “I made out with a couple of my friends when I was drunk, but it didn’t…well…” She paused, hesitant to say too much about the thing that had grown between them, even by implication. “It wasn’t like this.”

“Oh come on, that can’t be right,” Emily pressed, her voice playful. “What about high school crushes? No innocent trysts between friends or experiments at sleepovers?”

Veronica let out a bitter chuckle. “I didn’t really have many female friends. Most of them were convinced I was fucking their boyfriends or crushes or trying to fuck their boyfriends and crushes. Some even thought I was trying to get with their dads.”

“Ah, so you had a reputation.”

“I did. And being reviled as the school whore isn’t really conducive to having innocent trysts between girlfriends.”

“Hm, that’s a shame,” the older woman remarked. “I had a _particularly_ enlightening moment with my high school friend at sleepover.” Emily let out a short laugh, rich and husky. “It was lovely.”

Smiling at the intoxicating sound, Veronica monetarily redirected her gaze to the woman lying beside her. Emily was looking back at her, a smirk on her face, her green eyes alight with mischief. She had a critical case of bed head, her short auburn hair all pushed to one side and was naked from the waist up, the sheet lazily drawn across her lower body.

Her resistance crumbling, Veronica leaned forward and kissed Emily, and for a moment (or maybe many moments) she was lost in the feel of her lips against her own and the warm hand pressed insistently to her nape, drawing her deeper into the kiss. Veronica figured the stress of sneaking around, immensity of her guilt and long barren periods of loneliness were worth it for moments such as these. She could deal with the stress, bear the guilt and suffer through loneliness. And maybe one day, Emily might change her mind. She might decide that a passionless marriage wasn’t enough for her. She might choose to be with Veronica for real. It was possible, wasn’t it? Never mind the improbability of that outcome, or the fact that Emily wasn’t just married—she was married with two kids. Never mind that Emily had people relying on her, a home to maintain, a reputation to uphold and so much more to lose.

Because Veronica could not help but hope for their improbable future. For all her bravado and feigned indifference, she could not quite snuff out the part of herself that was wistful and stubbornly romantic. Something soft and kind—a piece of the young Ronnie Lodge who had watched love stories and hoped one day that she might find herself in one.

Breaking the kiss, Veronica settled back on her side of the bed. “There was one time…” she began tentatively, the memory of another kiss rising to the forefront of her mind—one shared in an entirely different time and place. It seemed like so long ago now, and so very one-sided, that Veronica had not registered it initially. “I mean,” she hedged, feeling curiously shy, “I don’t know if it really counts to be honest…”

“Hm?” Emily asked distractedly, still dazed from the kiss, a flicker of irritation passing across her fine features. “Oh, we’re still talking about that?” she asked through a yawn, the lazy smile returning to her face. “Well, do tell, Ms Veronica. Let’s hear it.”

Abruptly, Veronica wished she hadn’t said anything. There was something dismissive and distant about Emily now. She had grown tired of the topic of conversation as she was wont to do. Veronica could tell she was starting to think about the real world—the world beyond the walls of this stifling bed and breakfast in the middle of nowhere.

“Oh, it’s silly. It was just, well… Basically, I kissed a very popular and _very_ straight beauty queen once. It was after a pageant and I was pretty drunk and…” Veronica trailed off, a frown appearing on her face as the scene replayed in her mind.

The kiss had caught the Betty Cooper by surprise; Veronica remembered that much. It was impulsive and silly and the younger girl hadn’t pulled away, but she hadn’t reciprocated either. That meant that it wasn’t so much as shared kiss as a stolen one—a stark realisation that made Veronica feel suddenly sick with guilt. She had not thought of it that way before, convincing herself that there had been something in the other teenager’s expression that said she wouldn’t mind being kissed, a moment of mutual attraction, but of course this made so much more sense. It explained why Betty disliked her so much and why she had looked at with such revulsion the last time they had seen each other. Veronica had dealt with her fair share of unsolicited romantic advances. She knew how it felt. She ought to have known better.

“And?” Emily prompted, oblivious to Veronica’s shameful revelation. She was turned towards Veronica will her chin propped on one arm, a quizzical expression on her face.

“That’s all,” the younger woman murmured with a weak smile, suddenly assailed by a wave of self-loathing and shame for what she had done, what she had failed to realise. "I kissed her and left. I really shouldn’t’ve have done it. I don’t think it was very welcome.”

Emily laughed, amusement and incredulity evident in her smiling expression. “Oh sweetie, you don’t actually feel guilty, do you?” she asked, her grin widening at Veronica’s telling silence. “How very noble of you, but completely unnecessary. So what if she didn’t like it? I’m sure it’ll be a thrilling, scandalous tale to tell her fellow suburbanite housewives over a couple of glasses of wine on a Friday night. It’s really nothing to fret over,” she assured, a trace of smugness entering her expression, her green eyes bright with sudden mischief.

“Truth be told I wasn’t sure which way it was going to go the first time I kissed you that first time. I thought you might be interested in women, but I really couldn’t be sure. You’re not an easy one to pick, Veronica.” At this, Emily reached out to run a hand over Veronica’s bare shoulder before slowly moving down her arm. “You looked like a deer in the headlights at first, so startled.” She let out a low, warm chuckle, her hand continuing its slow, sensual caress Veronica’s forearm, forcing the younger woman to suppress a shiver of pleasure. “I thought you might run away or pull away. But you didn’t, did you?”

She hadn’t, although some days Veronica wished she had. The bad days, when Emily was ignoring her so that she could play the dutiful housewife, leaving Veronica to sit and stew in her room, wondering if she would ever see her again. It was always like that with Emily. Inexplicably long periods of silence punctuated by these fleeting moments of heady, intense contact. It came with the territory, Veronica supposed. Dividing your life like that, compartmentalising everyone, clearly came at a price. Veronica understood that price; she just wished that she did not have to be the one to pay it.

“How could I refuse?” Veronica replied, her heart not 100% in the jibe. Part of her was still thinking about Betty, agonising over the stolen kiss, wondering how she could have been so blind. “You were pretty persuasive.”

“I was, wasn’t I?” Emily’s smile grew wider as she slid her hand down Veronica’s forearm, slowly winding her fingers around Veronica’s wrist and pulling her hand towards her body. “You didn’t stand a chance,” she murmured, her breath hitching as she placed Veronica’s hand on her breast, and just like that it started again—Veronica was moving forward, pressing an urgent kiss to Emily’s lips and allowing herself to be drawn back between the sheets by her lover’s slender, skilled hands and amorous smile.

There was no talk after that, and maybe it was better that way. The sex was always great with Emily. The best Veronica had ever had. She shouldn’t let words or worries get in the way of that. It was clear (to Veronica, at least) that she and Emily connected on another level, that something about the two of them, together, just clicked. Granted, their relationship was not your traditional love story, nor would it ever be. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t find their own happy ending. Contrary to popular belief, Veronica could be patient. She could be hopeful too.

Veronica Lodge and Emily Montgomery (née Paulson) met at a garden party in Queens. The hostess was Hermione Lodge. She was medicated to the teeth, being the only way she could get through a social event these days. Even so, Hermione struggled. It might not be evident to anyone else, but it was clear as day to her daughter. It was in Hermione’s carefully curated speech, slight hesitations and too-frequent laughter. She was going for effortless, and some surely believed it, but all Veronica saw was the strain. It hurt to watch. So much so that Veronica made a point of not bearing witness. Instead, she made her meetings and greetings and fled to a less populated section of the gardens, fishing her earphones out of bag, plugging them into her ears and playing her music loud enough to drown out her thoughts.

That was how Veronica came upon her, in a far-flung corner of those gardens. She was alone, seated on a stone bench and half-turned away from Veronica, a smouldering cigarette clasped between plum lips. In the waning afternoon sunlight, Emily’s short auburn hair was a crown of fire and her pale skin seemed to glow. She was very beautiful, Veronica noticed that right away, and could not bring herself disturb her, was in fact about to turn away and give her some peace when Emily looked over her shoulder and sighted her. Inexplicably tongue-tied, Veronica recalled mumbling a garbled apology, all haste and no grace, and the look of frank, interested appraisal that Emily gave her—a kind of scrutiny that made Veronica’s cheeks warm. She had expected a polite dismissal or a measure of irritation—not a look like that and certainly not the slow, satisfied smile the followed it.

The rest was history. Emily asked Veronica if she wanted a cigarette. Veronica didn’t really, but said yes anyway. They introduced themselves and ended up talking for the better part of two hours as dusk fell. Emily was a brilliant conversationalist. She had a sharp wit and skill at eliciting information without saying too much about herself. They sat close to one another, leaning into each other’s space as they spoke, and Veronica didn’t mind. Not one bit. She felt oddly excited by the conversation and a little desperate for it not to end. Up close, Emily was even more gorgeous. She also had a habit of subtly complimenting Veronica—remarking on her dress, hair and make up. Veronica had once thought herself immune to compliments of this kind, but soon realised that this was a lie she had told herself. Because Veronica _was_ blushing. Because she felt warm, pleased and very flattered indeed.

They parted reluctantly that day, but not before Emily had given Veronica her number and promised that they “would talk again at another one of these interminable socials”. And so they did. Veronica made a point to attend the events she had once avoided like the plague. As did Emily. Her husband was often away, so most of the time she came alone. They did little to elicit suspicion. Emily rarely approached Veronica when she was among company, preferring to seek her out when she was alone. It was just talking at first. Talking and occasional touches—a guiding hand on the small of her back, a gentle caress to her forearm, a brush of the back of hand across the plane of her cheek. Veronica put it down to Emily being a tactile person. In hindsight, this rationalisation seemed intentionally obtuse, but it was simply Veronica’s way of understanding why someone like Emily, elegant and sophisticated with an amazing family and career, would treat her in this way.

The shared their first kiss at a cocktail party in Manhattan. Veronica vaguely recalled hearing something about it being heritage listed and thus immune from the inexorable spread of redevelopment. The party was spread across three floors, allowing the guests to mingle in many rooms from which sprung many balconies, at least on the street facing side. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to meet in one of those dim rooms, but Emily was preoccupied most of the night, surrounded by a flock of avid, inebriated socialites. Meanwhile, Veronica found herself staving off the affections of an accountant in his thirties—conventionally handsome, shamelessly persistent and an incredible bore. It was almost midnight when Veronica managed to lose him on one of the lower floors and escape to a deserted balcony. By that time, she had given up on seeing Emily and resigned herself to getting a cab home.

Lost in thought and feeling morose, Veronica didn’t hear Emily come in through the open door. Her first awareness of her was the feel of arms encircling her waist, another body, soft and feminine, behind her and a chin hooked on her shoulder. At the older woman’s touch, Veronica startled slightly and Emily immediately soothed, pressing her splayed hand to Veronica’s abdomen and whispering _it’s just me_ into her ear. Veronica could smell wine on her breath, feel breasts pressed to her back and hear the desire in her whispered voice. Instinctively, her chest tight with sudden longing, she leaned back into the embrace and caught a breathy outtake of air, a soft gasp of pleasure that made Veronica stiffen in surprise before going limp in Emily’s arms. The kiss felt inevitable. Even so, Veronica experienced a moment of panic as Emily turned her around and pulled her closer. _There might be people watching on the street below_ , it occurred to her, _and they might get the wrong idea if they see me like this, they might think I’m like_ that _, but but I’m not, I can’t be._

There was the panic, a momentary spiral of terrified speculation, and then there was the kiss. The latter made Veronica completely forget about the former. Emily kissed Veronica thoroughly, her hands cupping her cheeks—her embrace finely balanced between tenderness and the urgency of her desire. It made Veronica feel more than a mere object of lust; she felt cared for, cherished. It was an intoxicating feeling, one she seldom experienced, and in that moment, without her even realising it, Veronica gave her heart away. _No matter the people on the street_ , she thought with an ephemeral boldness, allowing herself to slide deeper into the kiss, _they’re probably not even watching anyway._

Other kisses—a number of other kisses—followed the first. Clandestine, carefully planned rendezvous at the social gatherings they had both once spurned. Veronica knew it was wrong. She was taking part in an affair—something many people would insist was entirely with consistenther character, however this had never really been her style. The few times prior she had found herself tangled up in someone else’s relationship had been by pure inadvertence or a man’s convenient omission of the existence of his partner. So yes, Veronica knew it was wrong…but there was also something so _right_ about it. And it wasn’t just the chemistry. Emily and Veronica understood each other. They talked and the years and circumstances that separated them fell away.

At least, that’s how it had felt in those first couple months. Things became murkier with the passage of time and Veronica were asked to pinpoint a moment when she felt this change, the ebb of the good giving way to the flow of the bad, she would admit that it was the first time they had sex.

The affair was six weeks old when it happened, at a fundraising event. Emily’s husband, Henry Montgomery was in attendance, as was Hiram and Hermione Lodge, making a rare, joint public appearance with their daughter. The presence of these people had Veronica resigned to the fact that she and Emily would have scant opportunity to speak to one another and no chance of spending any time alone. As it was, Emily surprised Veronica when she intercepted her on her way back from the restroom and quickly led her into a vacant disabled bathroom. What followed was a blistering kiss and bruising embrace—Emily’s fingers digging into the soft flesh at Veronica’s sides as she pressed her up against a wall and wedged her thigh between Veronica’s own. Veronica could recall her body sinking into the embrace as if of its own volition as her mind raced with the possibility of exposure, with the risk of doing that there, at that time, with Henry, Hiram and Hermione waiting in the hall outside.

She remembered mumbling something about slowing down, about being careful, the words “ _maybe we shouldn’t…_ ” and how feeble and unconvincing they sounded to her own ears. All the while, her body belied her reservations, arching against Emily’s form and grinding down on the thigh between her legs, the soft fabric of her evening gown bunched around her hips. It wasn’t until Emily reached down and hurriedly pulled Veronica’s underwear down her thighs, that the younger woman stilled, sensing the importance of the moment, appreciating their surroundings, the danger of the circumstances. She started to speak—wanting to slow it down, to see past the fog of arousal in her mind—when Emily silenced her with a kiss before whispering something that Veronica couldn’t quite remember to this day, something about making her feel good.

And that was that. Emily’s was stroking her and then she was inside her, fucking her in a public bathroom—not the place Veronica had envisaged and not the night she thought it might happen.Veronica didn’t bother trying to make sense of it: she simply gave in, let go, her fingernails digging into Emily’s bare, porcelain shoulders, leaving scarlet crescents in their wake, her body matching Emily’s pace as her mind reeled. Moments later, when she came, it was a too-brief blast of pleasure followed by a slow-release rush of suffocating shame. The latter was the feeling that persisted after Emily and Veronica (separately) rejoined the festivities. Shame and a hopeless, fatalistic kind of yearning. She would spend the remainder of the evening surreptitiously watching Emily as she glided arm in arm with her handsome husband amongst the throngs of people, heart heavy in her chest, wondering if what had happened was the start of something or the end.

As it turned out, it was only the beginning. After that, they didn’t simply meet at events. They contrived to be together. Emily booked rooms in obscure hotels in the city—places where they were unlikely to be recognised. They had a lot of sex. They talked less. Weeks turned into months and before Veronica knew it, six months had passed. Six months and no one suspected a thing.

Not that Veronica’s parents were conscious of their daughter’s movements. Hermione and Veronica were living in a 3-story home on Staten Island—close enough for Hiram to keep an eye on, far enough away that they were out of his (badly receding) hair. This allowed Hermione to do what she did best: totter aimlessly around the house in vodka and Valium addled stupor. Meanwhile, Hiram carried out his own affairs from his penthouse in the Upper East side. They were both so wrapped up in themselves, for vastly different reasons, that avoiding detection was effortless. As long as Veronica stuck to her unendurable social calendar and didn’t end up in jail or on the front page of the newspaper, they couldn’t care less what she did.

They same could not be said for Emily’s family. She had to be more careful. Hence the periods of radio silence—stretches of days, sometimes weeks, when Veronica wouldn’t hear anything from her lover. The last period had been particularly long. So much so that Veronica nearly cracked and contemplated asking her mother for Emily’s phone number—not the one Veronica had been given, but the one Emily used in her everyday life. It was pathetic, Veronica knew that. It would anger Emily, she knew that too, but _God_ it would be good to hear her voice, to have some certainty, some clarity, to know…

Mercifully, before Veronica could make a complete fool out of herself, Emily called. “I’ve booked a little B & B out of the city,” she had explained, sounding excited, “This weekend. It looks cute. I’ll pick you up at the bus exchange tomorrow morning, but you’ll need to get an early ferry; I don’t want to waste the day.” Veronica had agreed and asked a couple of clarifying questions, committing the details to memory and mentally reshuffling the plans she had made for that weekend. She sounded cool and casual to her on ears, as if she hadn’t spent days agonising over this phone call, wondering when it might come, wondering if it would come.

Emily picked her up the following day. They drove into the country away from the city. Veronica recalled the details of the trip with startling clarity—their last good day. Emily with one hand on the steering wheel and the other absentmindedly caressing the soft skin just above Veronica’s knee. The condensation on the windows, opacity at their edges, whiteness creeping across the glass like a disease. The chilly drizzle of rain that trickled from the gunmetal grey sky. Skeletal trees and brown grass, dead and stiff with frost. The dissonance with what she saw outside and how she felt inside—warm, desired and cherished. Maybe even loved.

_______

“Well, look who has deigned to grace me with her presence.”

Veronica rolled her eyes at the remark and flopped into the other side of the booth, flicking her hair out of her face as she did so. “Hello to you too, Abdul,” she replied, picking up the menu in front of her and scanning its contents, “Have you ordered yet?”

The young man sitting across from her cocked his head at this statement, a grin tweaking his lips, a knowing look in his brown eyes. “It’s your way of avoiding the subject, isn’t it?” he asked, his slight Welsh accent prominent in the rhetorical question. “‘Cause that would be a clumsy diversion, Vee, especially for you.”

“It’s actually my way of determining whether you’ve ordered anything, so I can figure out if I should order too,” Veronica explained with unnecessary detail, keeping her eyes locked on the menu before her. _Corn fritters with smoked salt and snow pea salad?_ She arched an eyebrow, tempted to forego her usual stack of pancakes for something savoury.

“So it’s definitely not your way of avoiding a conversation wherein you explain why you blew me off again for that married woman whose stringing you along?”

“She’s not—” Veronica started before biting her tongue, frustrated at having so easily taken the bait. Looking up from the menu, she caught sight of Abdul’s watchful gaze and self-satisfied smirk and suppressed a sigh before speaking again. “I’m not avoiding anything,” she said calmly, “I’m hungry. Now, have you ordered anything or should I—”

“I haven’t ordered anything, Vee,” Abdul cut her off, his voice edged with exasperation. Seeming resigned to her obstinate refusal to discuss anything until they had ordered, he unobtrusively beckoned to a nearby waitress, who smiled at him warmly before walking over to take their orders. Veronica ended up getting the corn fritters whereas Abdul went for breakfast burrito. They both ordered coffees, taking the beverage the same—large, black as tar and strong enough to give you heart palpitations, one of the things upon which they agreed. 

To Veronica’s immense relief, Abdul did not continue with the line of questioning after the waitress had taken their orders. Instead, they spoke of Abdul’s classes at NYU, the new music they were into and current affairs and politics, the latter being one of Abdul’s favourite topics of conversation. Between bites of food and slurps of coffee, he ranted about the imposition of tariffs and the poisoning of the Skripals on British soil. Meanwhile, Veronica listened without interruption, absorbing his words and quietly admiring his passion. 

Before Abdul, she had not had any friends who spoke of matters such as these. The circles to which Veronica belonged were far more concerned with the internal politics of their businesses and elite social echelons. They spoke of mergers, acquisitions and companies going into liquidation. They gossiped about the divorces, illicit affairs and unlikely unions. With their words, they pored eagerly over tales of addiction and mental illness, their greedy fingers digging into these subjects with no regard to their sensitivity. Veronica knew her family had been the subject of much speculation what with her mother’s drinking habits and her father’s protracted, high-profile criminal trial. She could only imagine what they might say if they found out about her and Emily. The mere thought made her stomach churn.

Compared to this greedy sordidness, Abdul was a fresh, bracing breath of air. He’d grown up in a tiny apartment in Newport, Wales before emigrating with his family to Queens, New York when he was a kid. He went to NYU and freely admitted that he’d more than likely committed himself to debt for the rest of his life by doing so. He did computer repairs on the side and thanked God everyday for rich people with no computer literacy (they were his best clientele—the people who put him through college). He was down to earth, grounded and disinterested in salacious Upper East side gossip. He was so different to the people at the parties and events the Lodges frequented and far more interesting besides. Veronica loved him for it. For his independence and contrariness that matched her own. She wished only that she’d found him sooner, for life felt far less lonely with him in it.

“Oh and before I forget,” Abdul interjected just as Veronica launched into her familiar rant about the unreliability of the NYC ferry service. _No doubt a tactical interruption,_ she surmised inwardly with faint exasperation as she watched Abdul withdraw a sheaf of papers from his satchel. Grinning, the young man held up the wad of slightly creased papers and said, “I have the lecture slides, my notes and the problems for you to answer. I found it pretty difficult to work through this week and I’m sure I’ve probably got some wrong, but I’ve no doubt it’ll be a cinch for you.”

“Oh, uh, do you want my help then?” Veronica asked, the slow heat of her embarrassment blooming in her chest. She had helped Abdul before with his math units. She had even, in her own time, worked on some problems for him. Or maybe not for him, exactly. Perhaps, sometimes, she did some problems when she had nothing else to do, when she was bored, just to kill time. It didn’t mean she had asked for, or even wanted, the lecture slides, his notes and the problem questions. She wasn’t even enrolled in the degree. She didn’t need to learn any of it.

“No, I don’t expect that,” he replied with a soft smile, “but you seem to have time on your hands and I thought you could, y’know, practice for next year. I mean, it’s not like you need it. To be honest, like, you’re _way_ above this level already, but—”

“I’m not going to college, Abdul,” Veronica interrupted, colour rising to her cheeks. She could not say why the mere suggestion embarrassed her, but was certain it had something to do with the look that would grace her parents’ faces if they knew she were contemplating such a course.

Her mother would be baffled, incredulous. Her father would scoff in disbelief. She doubted he would pay her way in any event; to his mind, it would be a waste of money. Veronica rarely saw her father anymore, but when she did, he was very vocal about his wish for her to settle down and find a decent man. The latest “decent man” had been Reggie Mantle—recently moved from Riverdale and gifted a position at Lodge Industries for which he was vastly under-qualified. Veronica had gone out with him once in a moment of humiliating weakness, during one of those long stretches of Emily Montgomery radio silence—a date that had her seriously reconsidering her attraction to men.

“Okay, well there’s no need to rule it out as an option just yet,” Abdul said in an easy tone. “See how you feel in a couple of months. In the meantime…” He held out the sheaf of papers with a grin and Veronica, despite her better judgment, reached out and took it from him.

“I’m only doing this because you suck at math,” she declared, prompting Abdul let out a bark of surprised laughter. “Now, tell me the problems you were having trouble with,” Veronica commanded, suddenly stern, and Abdul’s resistance waned; he smiled and leaned over the table between them, gently pushing aside condiments, salt and pepper so that he could lay flat the papers between them.

“4a is pretty bad,” he admitted, his voice soft, finger tapping the problem before him. It was about projectiles. Not particularly hard for Veronica. Even as he spoke, the words on the page resolved into numbers, an equation, and the path to the solution emerged with glorious resolution in her mind’s eye. “It’s one of the early questions, it should be easy, but there’s some I’m doing wrong, something I’m missing…”

“I see,” she murmured, and she did see. So clearly in that moment. _If only life were as simple as math_ , she thought wryly, before asking Abdul for a pen and piece of blank paper so that she could show him what he was missing.

They worked quietly for a time, exchanging the pen between them, their heads tipped together across the table. Soon enough, their meals arrived and Abdul insisted that they stop, a guilty expression on his face, as if he had inconvenienced Veronica. He demanded that he shout for meal for her trouble and Veronica let him. She let him even though she could pay for everyone’s meal in the cafe on her parent’s credit card and knew her parents wouldn’t bat an eye. The gesture mattered. Besides, Veronica was far too proud and embarrassed to confess to Abdul how much this time meant to her. She hoped it went without saying, but knew it probably didn’t.

“So…”Abdul dragged out the syllable and made two nervous gestures: adjusting his glasses and running his hand over the fuzz of black hair cropped close to his skull. Before him, sat two empty plates stacked one on top of the other; he had cleared his own and finished off Veronica’s meal as well. He was always hungry. Veronica often joked that he had a black hole for a stomach.

Hearing the hesitancy in his tone, Veronica narrowed her eyes, annoyed, possessed with an inkling of what he wished to discuss. “So what?” she asked.

“Woah, chill out, Veronica.” Abdul’s hands rose in mute surrender. “I was just going to ask how your weekend was…seeing as you bailed at short notice. She must be pretty special—”

“Enough, Abdul,” she replied shortly, hackles rising. She didn’t want to talk about it. She regretted confiding in Abdul in the first place. She’d confessed to the night after after her dreadful date with Reggie. They’d gone out for a couple of drinks or, in Veronica’s case, more than a couple. She was wasted and weak with wanting when words came out, seemingly of their own volition. She told him everything and later cried in his arms. Abdul held her. Just held her and didn’t say a thing.

“Enough of what, Veronica?” he challenged, an edge to his voice. “I think we should talk about it. I think we need to. D’you have any idea what you’re doing?”

“I do, actually. We’re careful. We—”

“And that makes it okay, does it? ‘Cause no one’s going to find out?”

“Be quiet,” she hissed, casting a swift, surveying look at the patrons seated to their left and right, all of whom appeared thankfully preoccupied with their own meals and conversations. “Are you trying to tell the whole restaurant?”

“There are kids involved, Veronica,” Abdul replied in a hushed tone, leaning across the table. “Nothing good can come of this.”

“Emily’s family is her business,” she replied softly, acutely aware of the inadequacy of her words and her own cowardice. “She’s got in under control—”

Abdul laughed, a bitter, too-loud bray. Veronica flinched at the sound and shut her mouth, biting off the end of her lame excuse. Meanwhile, a middle-aged couple seated two seats to their right glanced over, curious and concerned. Instinctively, Veronica’s cast a placatory and apologetic smile in their direction, saying _nothing to see here, folks_ without having to say anything at all.

“Keep. It. Down,” she enunciated carefully as she turned back towards her friend. “You sound like a maniac.”

“And you sound like a fool,” Abdul said seriously, leaning back in his seat. There was something hard in his expression, unyielding. “Y’know just because she’s a beautiful woman, doesn’t make her any less like your father. She’s still fucking around behind her spouse’s back. She’s still putting her family on the line. She’s still stringing some poor sod along with false promises and intimacy. You must know she’s never going to leave him, right?”

Veronica stood up so abruptly, her knees slammed into the underside of the table. The cutlery and crockery rattled with the force of the impact—a sound swiftly accompanied by a bright starburst of pain that stole the wind from Veronica’s lungs and thickened her red mist of rage. She could scarcely comprehend that he had brought her family into this discussion. She was enraged by the gall and presumption, as if he knew what her parents were like, as if he could ever understand a single, goddamn thing about her life. She was hurt too. Hurt because he had ambushed her when she was at ease and unprotected, her defences down.

“Fuck you,” she spat, fury choking her words, her legs throbbing. “Don’t you dare talk about my family. You don’t know shit, you ignorant fuck.”

“Veronica,” Abdul murmured, his face collapsing into an expression of misery and remorsefulness. He stood up, palms face up, turned towards her. Standing, he towered over her, six foot seven, yet in that moment, he had never looked so small. “I’m so sorry. That was way out of line. I’m just worried. I—”

Veronica didn’t hang around to hear the rest. She fumbled with her purse, extracted a $20 bill, threw it onto the table and made her hasty exit, hurrying to the door. There were tears in her eyes, a tightness in her chest and a lump in her throat and, _shit_ , this was embarrassing. She had made a scene. She was always making a goddamn scene. Her mom hated that about her and Veronica was starting to hate it too. She was too emotional, too hysterical. She was wearing her silly fucking heart on her sleeve.

“Vee!” she heard Abdul calling her name and his swiftly approaching footsteps. “Veronica!” His breathless voice was accompanied by a gentle hand on her arm, one she dislodged with a violent shrug.

“Leave me alone, Abdul,” she snapped, her voice thick with those mortifying tears. They were on the sun-drenched street now and, _whaddaya know_ , people were staring. God, Veronica couldn’t even blame them for it. For all they knew, they were witnessing a messy public breakup. “I’m going home.”

“I’m so sorry,” he repeated, sounding equally as anguished as she, his earnest contrition hurting her more than it should have.

Because Veronica could handle cruelty. She had copped her fair share of maliciousness. She’d grown up in the Upper East side, after all. She had endured the rumours and the speculation and the awful things they used to say about her mother: trophy wife, mail order bride, gold digger, maid in Manhattan. God help her, she really hated that last one. She herself had been called slut, whore, skank and accused of contracting and spreading at least half a dozen sexually transmitted infections.

So Veronica understood cruelty, had even indulged a time or two herself, much to shame. She got it. But this, the genuine concern, hard truths and uncontrived sympathy…she did not know what to make of it. There was no apparent ulterior motive. Abdul was saying what he was saying seemingly because he believed it and thought she needed to hear it. It was as simple as that and she wished it was more complicated. Give her the backhanded compliments, snide and subtle slights, and teeth-gritted passive aggressive smiles any day of the week—Veronica could handle it. _But please_ , she silently pleaded as she power-walked down the sunny street, weaving through the people moving in both directions, _not this. Not now._

“Please, Veronica.” Abdul was walking beside her now, his messenger bag half-zipped in his haste to chase after her, “I just wanna say—“

Veronica stopped abruptly, rounded on him and said softly, her voice strained, “I think you’ve said enough, don’t you?”

It seemed to do the trick; Abdul went very still and quiet. He nodded his head. Meanwhile, people flowed down the street on either side of them, parting like a river around a rock.

“At least let me order you an Uber,” he said quietly, “You’re upset. I’ve made you upset—”

“Don’t offer me something you clearly can’t afford,” Veronica said stonily, adjusting her handbag on her shoulder and smoothing out her shift, determinedly avoiding her friend’s gaze. She regretted her words immediately after speaking them. It was that cruelty again. It came naturally to her. “I can find my own way home,” she continued, her voice softer now, “I’ll text you when I get there.”

“Make sure you do.” Abdul’s reply was accompanied by the gentle touch of his hands on her shoulders. Prompted, Veronica looked up and met his eyes. She expected to see annoyance or hurt. She figured she deserved it. Instead, she saw the softness of his expression, brown eyes holding nothing but warmth, remorse and compassion. “Y’know I’m always here,” he said, holding her gaze, “Whatever happens.”

And then her vision was blurry. Tears in her eyes. An ache in throat, her chest, like she was being torn in two. Veronica couldn’t bear it. She nodded her head once. She tried to smile. The expression rippled on her face, tremulous and trying. Not trusting herself to speak, Veronica stepped back, turned on her heel, cast a wave over her shoulder and allowed the stream of people to pick her up and take her away.

_______

Abdul and Veronica crossed paths by chance at a party in Manhattan. Abdul hadn’t been invited and had never the pleasure of meeting the birthday boy—a rich white boy on the cusp of adulthood whose parents had booked out an entire rooftop bar for his 21st birthday. Notwithstanding this lack of invitation, he allowed himself to be dragged along to the party by a couple of his well-off college friends with promises of free food and alcohol.

What Abdul expected to happen at the party was this: (1) his friends would abandon him; (2) he would stuff himself with as much food and alcohol as he could stand; and (3) he’d make a half-hearted attempt to find said friends before catching the night bus home.

Except it didn’t quite play out as Abdul anticipated. Abdul’s friends didn’t abandon him, at least not at first. Instead, they convinced him to play what turned out to be a hectic game of beer pong. Their opponents were a frat boy and two women: one short, giggly and drunk, the other tall, aloof and imperious. The frat boy was a terrible shot. The short and drunk girl was better, but not by much. If they had been playing against those two and no one else, Abdul and his friends would have wiped the floor with them. As it was, they were up against two hopeless players and the aloof girl, who proved to be some sort of Olympian when it came to beer pong. To Abdul’s dismay, she did not miss a single shot, swatted aside their bounce shots with barely concealed disdain and threw back drinks, one after the other, with no apparent effect on her coordination or accuracy. She was kind of scary and also, Abdul realised belatedly, quite beautiful.

He hadn’t noticed this at first, such was her supremacy at beer pong, but it too was undeniable. Her dark hair was expertly piled into a neat bun atop her head, drawing attention to her high cheekbones and the insolent curl to her darkly painted lips, all of which gave her a classical, intimidating kind of beauty. She was not particularly friendly to her teammates. For the most part, she tolerated the drunk girl, who was alternating between clutching the aloof girl for balance and begging her to give her tips in a too-loud, slurred voice. Whereas the frat boy was an even less appealing prospect. In stony silence, the aloof girl avoided his too-familiar touches, not-so-subtle overtures and stream of backhanded, obnoxious compliments, like: “Have you boys ever met a woman who could shoot like this?”, “That’s my girl!” and “See? Not just a pretty face”.

For his part, Abdul enjoyed the game, primarily because he knew they were going to win. It was pretty obvious; the aloof girl was simply carrying too much deadweight. Granted, the drunk girl had gotten progressively better over the course of the game, but she had also knocked over two cups of rum and coke on her own side of the table, essentially doing her opponent’s job for them. Meanwhile, after getting no traction with his female teammates, the frat boy had become sulky and distracted and taken to drifting to the edge of the captive crowd to chat up more willing women. The few times he did take a shot, he didn’t even get close, which led Abdul to suspect a petulant act of sabotage (judging by the filthy look on the aloof girl’s face, she had come to the same conclusion).

In the end, the aloof girl stood alone, her teammates having drifted away for better things. Grimly focussed, but clearly losing. Abdul could see the bitter, defeated twist to her mouth and his own shit-eating grin in the reflective surface of the slick ping pong table. He could taste victory. There were two measly cups left on her side of the table and a healthy five left on his own. Not to mention the fact that he was shooting well tonight. Perhaps not as well as the aloof girl, but pretty good all the same.

And then Abdul made the mistake of checking his phone.

He could feel it vibrating in his pocket, a near constant _burr_ that told him one of his many group chats was active. Distracted and annoyed, he reefed the device out of his pocket and quickly read the first of many WhatsApp notifications, which happened to be from one of his classmates, Michael.

 **Mike** : it will be a miracle if i pass that

 **Mike** : fuck

Those messages seemed fairly innocuous upon first glance. Of course, they also left Abdul trying to identify precisely what “that” was. It really didn’t make a lot of sense. He and Mike only shared one class and the next thing on the agenda was an online quiz due a week from now. And Mike never did anything in advance. He just wasn’t that kind of guy. So it was…odd to say the least. It made him wonder whether he had mistaken the date, and it was then that Abdul felt his stomach drop and something akin to vertigo assail him. Abruptly, he found himself cusp of a dreadful kind of comprehension. _No_ , he thought desperately, in denial even as he opened the group chat and read the remaining messages. _That’s next week. It’s gotta be next week._

 **Frankie** : There was definitely content we hadn’t covered in there.

 **Mike:** fuck fuck fuck

 **Amira** : i ran out of time :(

 **Mike** : if only we had the extra 20 mins that lou gets

 **Louis** : If only you had dyslexia too, then you’d understand why I get extra time…

 **Mike** : relax dude. i’m just saying

 **Amira** : nah, Mike, you’re putting your foot in it…again

“Abs!”

Abdul jerked his head up to see his two teammates looking at him accusingly.

“What?” he asked, dazed and distracted, “Is it…is it my turn?”

“You let her get the bounce shot in!” Johnny accused, his face flushed from anger and booze. “It happened right in front of you. It even circled the rim and you just fucking stood there. You need to focus and stop looking at your damn phone. Jesus Christ.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Abdul apologised distantly, his eyes drawn to the small orange sphere floating in the cup in front of him. “I didn’t realise… Actually, I…I need to, well…”

“You need to drink your drink and take the damn shot,” his angry teammate interjected harshly, his face going from a shade of soft pink to bright scarlet—a transition that reminded Abdul of just how unpleasant Johnathan Richards II could be after one too many drinks. Johnny was your stereotypical angry drunk and, at this stage of the evening, was just starting his inexorable slide into alcohol-fuelled resentment and paranoia. His eyes had take on a glazed, hungry quality and his face was growing darker in colour. Watching him, not for the first time, Abdul found himself pitying the person destined to be Johnny’s future spouse.

“I need to leave,” Abdul said absent-mindedly, unperturbed by Johnny’s ire, his gaze flicking down to the lit screen of his phone. “Something’s come up.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” he exploded, throwing his hands up in the air. Meanwhile, Stanley, Abdul’s other teammate, said in a placatory tone, “Abdul, dude, at least finish the drink and take your next shot. It’ll be over soon anyway.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” the aloof girl called from the other side of the table, not helping matters in the slightest. “Without him,” she gestured at Abdul, “I’ll wipe the floor with the two of you. No offence, but you fucking suck.”

The quiz was due at midnight, Abdul realised. He still had time. He had—he checked his watch—just under an hour to complete it. He didn’t have time to make it home, but he might be able to do it on his phone. He also didn’t have time to study, which didn’t bode well at all seeing as math was his worst subject. In addition, he was pretty drunk and, now that he mentioned it, starting to feel rather sick. He fancied his could feel the swill of rum, coke, beer and fries churning in the put of his gut.

Damn, he was so fucking screwed.

Swiftly, without thinking, Abdul plucked the ping pong ball out of the cup in front of him, chugged the mercifully small amount of rum and coke and took his final shot. He did these things in such quick succession that it took everyone by surprise. Johnny was busy hurling insults back in the aloof girl’s direction whilst Stanley was preoccupied telling Johnny to _calm the fuck down_. Meanwhile, the aloof girl had her arms folded across her chest, appearing both amused and repulsed as she regarded Johnny’s flushed and angry face. All three of them were not prepared for Abdul’s final shot, his worst shot, the shot that missed the entire table and hit the aloof girl square in the chest. She blinked in surprise as the ball bounced harmlessly off her body and into the garden. On the other side of the table, Johnny appeared confused, not comprehending quite what had happened, whilst Stanley groaned in defeat.

“Alright, that’s me,” Abdul said briskly, his cheeks warm, wishing he hadn’t hit the aloof girl in the boob with a bloody ping pong ball and wondering if it would be more awkward at this point to acknowledge it. “It’s been a good game, but I really gotta go. It’s nearly midnight, after all,” he added and wanted to kick himself. He sounded like such a damn fool, like someone who had never been to a party before. “Anyway, uh, best of luck,” he finished lamely and promptly fled.

10 minutes later Abdul found himself in an unlikely situation: seated in a not-so-populated corner of the rooftop bar, squinting at the illuminated screen of his iPhone, a pen poised over the blank back of a coaster as he tried and failed to recall the essential details of his lectures. He knew it was hopeless. The only relevant mathematical concept his intoxicated and tired brain could comprehend was that he had a 25% chance of getting the answers right by randomly selecting A, B, C or D. Resigning himself to this probability, Abdul selected A for question 1, figuring it was a good a guess as any, and was about to move onto question 2 when he heard a voice coming from his right.

“Absolutely not.”

Startled by the interruption, Abdul looked over his shoulder. To this surprise, there stood the aloof girl was peering over his shoulder, a glass of water in one hand and an exasperated look on her face.

“Sorry?”

“There’s always one,” she explained, an edge of impatience in her voice. “One answer in a multiple choice question that is clearly wrong, that obviously doesn’t belong. For this question, that’s option A. Intuitively, it doesn’t make sense to get that answer, not if you’re using the right equation.”

In response, Abdul stared at her blankly, not computing the response. _Is the aloof girl really giving me tips for my math quiz? How does she know any of this shit? More to the point, why does she care?_ He contemplated asking these questions. However, being conscious of the time, he asked instead, “And…if you don’t know the right equation?”

“Well,” she rolled her eyes and manoeuvred herself onto the bench seat next to him, wrangling herrestrictive, dark green skirt into submission as she did so, “why the hell are you taking a test if you haven’t studied? And why are you doing it here of all places?”

“I…” Abdul sighed, took off his glasses, closed his eyes and briefly massaged the bridge of his nose, trying to allay the throbbing headache he could feel building. “It’s due at midnight.” Opening his eyes, he replaced his glasses and mustered up a weak and watery smile, trying for a brave face and coming up woefully short. “I kind of forgot about it. I’m just trying to, y’know, do my best at this point. Better than nothing, right?”

“Not by much, Cinderella,” she remarked cooly and Abdul laughed—a broken and manic sound. He knew she was right. He knew he was in a terrible situation. What he didn’t know was why she had come over here to remind him of this.

“I have a 25% chance of getting the answers right just by guessing,” he murmured defiantly, still not comprehending why he was wasting time making these justifications to a virtual stranger. “It’s worth a try.”

In response, the aloof girl rolled her eyes and shuffled closer to him, peering at the screen of his phone. In such close proximity, Abdul could smell her perfume, something floral with an undertone of musk. Unobserved, he studied her profile, tracing the line of her strong features and the wrinkle in her brow. He imagined she had plenty of admirers, plenty of men who would love to spend time with her this evening. It made no sense why she was sitting here with him. Not that she seemed that interested in him, in any event. _If anything,_ he thought, _she seems more invested in this bloody quiz—_

“B”.

“Sorry?” he asked, bewildered by her response and the fact that she had taken the liberty of changing the answer on his phone from A to B.

“The answer to question 1 is B,” she repeated, gesturing at his phone, “Shall we continue, Cinderella? We don’t have much time.” She checked an expensive-looking watch on her left wrist. “Only 35 minutes.”

Abdul studied her momentarily, searching for evidence that she was taking the piss. It could be a cruel joke. He knew rich girls liked to do that, especially to poor “uncultured” boys such as himself. And yet she didn’t look like she was joking. She looked, if anything, impatient.

“How do you know the answer to question 1 is B?” he asked, genuinely curious.

“I know.”

“You didn’t even do any working out. Are you saying—”

“I know,” she repeated, holding his gaze, a serious expression on her face.“You don’t have to trust me. Even if I’m guessing, what would it matter? You were going to guess them all anyway.”

“Well, I could guess tactically,” he reasoned, “I had a good combination in mind. A, B, B, D…C, D…” Abdul paused, thoughtful, before continuing, “B, A—”

“That makes no sense. Literally no sense.” The aloof girl didn’t look so aloof anymore. She looked equal parts exasperated and baffled. He could understand the latter emotion. He was feeling pretty baffled himself. It had truly been a strange evening in the life of Abdul Alvi Sayer. “A nice combination of letters is not going to pass this test. The right answers are going to pass this test. Now, _please_ , let me help you. God knows you need it.”

“Oh fine then,” Abdul acceded ungraciously, holding his foggy head in his hands, wishing he weren’t so goddamn drunk and silently cursing the woman seated next to him for not helping with that condition (if only she had been a little less skilled at beer pong).

Of course, his drunkenness wasn’t the real problem. The real problem was the fact that he had forgotten about a quiz worth 20% of his final grade. He was ashamed and angry with himself, but not surprised that it had happened. He knew he had too much on his plate: two jobs, full time college and a slowly dying social life. _I’m barely keeping my head above water at this point,_ he thought morosely, feeling the heat in his flushed face, burning with the shame of it all. He came from a family of hard workers. A family of people who made their own luck. This shit—the going to fancy parties, missing tests and cheating kind of shit—was not what they were about.

His mother would be particularly horrified if she knew the situation he was in. She was a proud woman who had never touched a drop of alcohol in her life and had no plans to do so. She disapproved of her husband and adult children drinking alcohol, but was resigned to the fact that she couldn’t stop them. Instead, she had pleaded with them not to drink to excess and refrain from disgraceful behaviour. Abdul fancied that he hadn’t done well on either score this evening.

“My mum would kill me if she knew you were doing this for me,” he groaned, lifting his head out of his hands to peer at the aloof girl, who had one eye on the quiz on his phone and the other on the calculator she had pulled up on her own iPhone.

“She doesn’t need to know, Cinderella.” Her distracted reply came after several beats of silence, her fingers dancing across the calculator on her phone, the number multiplying, dividing, disappearing and reappearing. Abdul noted that she was already up to question 7. He was more certain of her authenticity now. If she wanted to bullshit him, she could have done so with far less effort.

“I know but—”

“It’s one quiz,” she interjected, not looking away from his phone. “Next time, you’ll remember, study and stay home and get it done instead of coming to this shitty party.”

“ _Shitty party_?” he repeated, incredulous. Abdul surveyed his surroundings. To his left, he saw a packed dance floor; to his right, an open bar laden with a myriad of different wines, beers, ciders, spirits and liquors; straight ahead, between the groups of people, a glorious view of lower Manhattan at night. Looking around, everyone appeared to be enjoying themselves. People were chilling, drinking, smiling, vibing, flirting, laughing. At this point, the only two people at risk of bringing the mood down were Abdul and the aloof girl.

“Um, I’m pretty sure this is an amazing party,” he continued. “Defs better than some of the grubby college dorm parties I’ve been to lately.”

The aloof girl looked at him askance, a knowing look in her brown eyes. “The people are shitty,” she explained, “You’d agree if you met some of them. The nice view and free booze doesn’t make them any less insufferable. Well, I mean, the booze helps a little, if I’m being honest,” she amended, returning her focus to his phone as she continued to speak, “and not all of them are bad, but the vast majority are awful, truly.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it,” he murmured, studying the partygoers with greater scrutiny. He had gotten so caught up in the venue and trimmings that he had failed to consider the quality of the people. Perhaps they were all entitled brats with nothing of great interest to say, in which case this would still be a pretty good party. Much enjoyment could be derived from great booze and a gorgeous view. “Anyway, how are you going?” he asked. “Can I help? Maybe I can work the calculator?”

The aloof girl cast a gentle smile in his direction, a surprisingly soft expression, and shook her head. “I’ve got this. It’s easier to do on my own.”

Feeling useless, Abdul nodded in assent. “I’ve no idea why you’re helping me, but thank you anyway. Seriously, I really should’ve said that earlier. I’ll have to pay you back somehow. Can I buy you a drink?” he asked before wincing at the implication. “Fuck, I didn’t mean that as a come on. I just meant I can get you a drink if you like, if you’re thirsty that is—”

“Dude, relax,” the aloof girl interjected with a chuckle. “It’s fine. I probably should stay as sober as possible for this.” She inclined her towards his phone, which was displaying question 15 of 25. “I’m still pretty buzzed at the moment,” she confessed with a sympathetic smile, “I hope you don’t mind.”

Abdul laughed, finding her honesty refreshing. “It can’t be any worse than my strategic guessing.”

“True.”

“I’m Abdul by the way,” he said, an afterthought, “And you are?”

“Veronica,” she replied, her eyes remaining glued on the quiz on Abdul’s phone, and something like déjà vu brushed past the young man, a soft flutter of recognition at the outer limits of his awareness.

“Do I…” he started, stopped, brow knitting in concentration and confusion. “Do I know you?”

She smiled, lop-sided and lovely; Veronica minus the pretence and with more than a slash of humility. In time, Abdul would learn that this was the best kind of Veronica.

“You do now.”

A week later, Abdul would very belatedly realise that the aloof girl was none other than Veronica Lodge, the wayward daughter of Hiram Lodge, CEO of Lodge Industries. It came to him whilst dismantling an old computer for cleaning, his thoughts gently unspooling as he dusted off an ancient exhaust fan and extracted a matted layer of cat hair from a cranny in the depths of the machine. Suddenly, Abdul recalled seeing her on television standing by her father during his post-acquittal interview. He (along wth most people he knew) had been entertained by the sardonic thumbs up Veronica gave to a crowd of hungry press—an image that had even become a short-lived meme for good few weeks. It explained the familiarity, the déjà vu, he had felt when she mentioned her name.

Two weeks later, Veronica messaged Abdul on Instagram, asking him how he’d gone in the quiz. It took him by complete surprise. There was a tick next to her username—she was _verified_ —and yet _she_ had remembered him, reached out to him. Not knowing what else to say, he answered her question, messaging to say she had got 100% in the quiz. That too was something that had surprised him when he received his mark a couple of days after the party. He did not expect a perfect score, was kind of hoping that he had received a shit one so he needn’t feel so guilty about the whole affair. Yet there it was: 25 out of 25. A testament to Veronica’s casual, understated brilliance and Abdul’s heinous lack of foresight and incompetence.

At Abdul’s suggestion, and on Veronica’s proviso that he didn’t “make it weird”, they met for lunch. She reluctantly allowed him to shout her as a thank you. Right away, Abdul realised that they had led very different lives, but nonetheless had a lot in common and for a brief time, he harboured a small crush for Veronica. She was very beautiful, after all. Not to mention witty and brazen. And yet the feeling did not last long. He could not quite articulate why this was—it wasn’t as if Veronica became less beautiful, brazen and witty with the passage of time. Rather, Abdul found the feeling fading in favour of a close friendship, and thought that it was probably for the best. Because he truly valued their friendship. It was rare and lovely and, most of the time, easy.

Yet sometimes it was hard. Abdul could not deny that fact. In some ways, they were like chalk and cheese. Veronica was privileged and took many things for granted. Her family had a private chef—someone who prepared portions of oven baked trout on a bed of faro, asparagus and kale salad and placed said portions in the refrigerator, ready for consumption at any convenient moment. Each morning, Veronica enjoyed a custom-made smoothie prepared by that very same chef. She drove her mom’s old car—a 2016 Tesla that she actually _complained_ about. Unbelievably, she had never done a load of washing, mopped a floor or scrubbed a sink full of dirty dishes. Domestic labour was a foreign concept to her, as was paid work, unless she or her parents were doing the paying. _How_ , Abdul found himself wondering on more than one occasion, _could someone be so out of touch?_

Of course, this was to be expected growing up the way she had. So Abdul didn’t hold it against her too much. And Veronica developed a little perspective. Being around him seemed to have that effect. Perhaps she realised how little he had in comparison or saw how hard he worked for what he had. Maybe it was those Sayer family dinners that did it; Veronica sandwiched between Abdul’s younger brother and sister, bickering in a wild combination of English, Welsh and Urdu whilst they shovelled down their meal, the room crowded and warm with excited chatter, laughter and debate.

Seeing her like that, amongst his family, Abdul had come to a realisation: Veronica seemed to like being around his family and they seemed to like her being around. Even Abdul’s mother, usually so stern and unyielding, had a soft spot for Veronica. They spoke and laughed often. What about, Abdul couldn’t hazard a guess, Whatever it was, it left an impression on difficult-to-please Mina Sayer. _She has spunk_ , she once said to Abdul, approval and, to his surprise, affection in her voice. _Spunk and steel._

Swiftly, unexpectedly, Abdul and Veronica became fixtures in each other’s lives. Granted, he never met her family, and very rarely did they visit her home, but he didn’t take this to heart. Abdul knew this had more to do with Veronica’s relationship with her family, than it had to do with her relationship with him. He figured he was better off anyway. By Abdul’s reckoning, Hiram Lodge was a mercenary, narcissistic twat with a sex addiction, more money than sense and a clean criminal record that he didn’t deserve. On that other hand, Hermione Lodge didn’t seem nearly so repugnant. From Veronica’s account, she was too strung out on prescription meds to be anything but superficially functional.

To anyone on the outside, Abdul and Veronica were an unlikely pairing, but to each other it all made sense. It was this closeness that emboldened Abdul to call Veronica on her bullshit. He respected her enough not to sugarcoat it, to tell her precisely what she needed to hear. Most recently, what she needed to hear, _really_ needed to hear, was that her “girlfriend”, the notorious (and very much married) Emily Montgomery was selfish, entitled, cruel and everything Veronica hated about her very own father.

Although, perhaps he needn’t have mentioned the latter to make his point. He knew that her family was a sore spot. He knew better. Still, he had said it. And why? To what end? Well, the fact of the matter was that Abdul could not help himself. Because how could Veronica herself not comprehend the hypocrisy? How could she fail to realise that her lover was as shitty and selfish as her deadbeat father? Was it not blindingly obvious?

Evidently not.

Abdul realised this when Veronica had fled the cafe on the day they fought, tears in her eyes, bristles out and barbs flying out of her mouth. Damn, she could be cruel when she wanted to be. Offence was the best defence Abdul guessed; nothing better than an inflicted wound to mirror the one suffered. Abdul knew this about Veronica. He understood and didn’t hold it against her. Truth be told, in that moment, he kind of wanted her to hurt him. He deserved it. Let her be cruel. Let him suffer and let her get home safely. Let him turn back time a mere 15 minutes into the past and bite his tongue, never speak a word of Emily, a woman who had convinced Veronica that this—the secrecy and shame—was all that she was worth.

Let Veronica realise that she deserved better.

In the days that followed their fight, Abdul went to work in a self-pitying funk, cleaning years of accumulated dust, pet hair and insects out of ageing computer hardware without conscious thought. At college, he tried to study, but was distracted by his guilt. All the while, math was more incomprehensible than ever and he had offended the one person to whom he could go for help. And he couldn’t call her now. Of course he couldn’t. He’d fucked that up too.

Three weeks passed. Abdul’s unread texts and unheard voice messages amassed on Veronica’s phone and he started to wonder if this was it—the end. He started to wonder and, also, worry about Veronica, all the more because he knew no one else would.

And then she called.

“Hello?”

In the early hours of Saturday morning, Abdul answered his phone the third ring, voice slurred with sleep. According to the clock beside his bed, it was 2:33am. The day prior had been long: work, college and family all crammed into one. He had fallen asleep that night almost at once, for once too exhausted to worry about college, work or Veronica.

“Abs, s’all a joke…”

The voice on the other end of the line was feminine, completely incomprehensible and almost recognisable. It was almost as if he knew that voice, but couldn’t quite assign a name to it. His thoughts felt excruciatingly slow, moving through his mind with all the speed of thick, cool treacle.

“It’s so so, like, random…” the voice meandered, directionless and senseless, In the background, Abdul could heard a man speaking and a burst of manic laughter. All the while, his head throbbed, eyes burned with fatigue, and the name of the speaker continued to elude him. Yet he knew it. He knew her. “…I don’t really get it…” the woman continued her musings, her voice touched with a trace of hysteria and something plaintive,”…and, um, well—oh fuck _off_ , will you?” she broke off to reprimand someone on the other end of the line, her voice sharpening with irritation.

And with those words, Abdul remembered. It was the exasperated and laconic way in which the woman had spoken to whatever poor soul had drawn her ire. He knew that voice. He knew it well, although it had been some time—too much time—since he had last heard it.

“Veronica?” he asked, sitting up in bed and groggily shoving his glasses onto his face. “Are you okay?”

“She must’ve lost it or something…” Veronica babbled on the other end, sounding confused and oddly childlike. He could make out other sounds too: the distant thump of bass, muted hum of conversation and the occasional peal of laughter. He guessed she was at a party, which wasn’t unusual. Yet _this_ was odd: her drunk calling him; how confused and witless she sounded. It was weird and a little scary. “I, uh…that must be it. Don’tcha think, Abs?”

“Veronica, I don’t know what you’re saying,” Abdul said patiently, his senses slowly returning. Hurriedly, a sudden urgency possessing him, he shucked off his duvet, placed his feet on the floor and reached over to turn on his lamp, his modest bedroom drawn into sudden focus. “Where are you now? What are you up to?”

“I was…dancing. So much dancing. I felt like I could dance forever and ever and I…I hid my—” she hiccuped, a painful sound, and let out a watery burp. “I hid my bags in the bathroom ‘cause there’s like, there’s some expensive shit in there, Abdul. Y’gotta, y’know, I’m no fool—”

“Vee, where are you?” he asked, patience giving way to panic. Veronica didn’t sound like herself. She sounded muddled, strange and small. Besides alcohol, Abdul wondered what else and how much she’d taken. “I’ll come get you. You tell me where you are and I’ll drive over right now.”

“It’s too far, Cinderella” she murmured miserably, more lucid now. “I shouldn’t’ve woke you. I, I, it’s just…” her voice faltered, thick with emotion, and the line went silent. She was trying very hard not to cry. The line was quiet but Abdul reckoned he could hear that—the strain and her pain, the lump-in-your-throat, knot-in-your-chest kind of ache. It brought tears to his own eyes and made his heart throb in painful solidarity. “I should wait. Give it time. I shouldn’t…not just yet. She’ll call. She will. I don’t think she meant it…it was just for show, y’know?”

“It’s not too far,” he insisted, not bothering to understand the rest. “Just send me the address, stay put and I’ll be there before you know it.”

“Abdul,” she sobbed, crying hard now, and he could scarcely bear to listen to it. Abdul felt physically ill. He was suffocated by the moment, oppressed by every sensation: his feet glued to the scratchy carpet floor of his bedroom; his sweaty hand desperately gripping his phone whilst the other closed around a fistful of rumpled bedsheets; his gaze fixed on the chipped corner of his secondhand wardrobe, richly lacquered and marred with a myriad of little scratches and divots; the sound Veronica’s voice, her sobs, echoing through his tinny speaker of his phone.

“Tell me where you are, Veronica,” he demanded, his voice at once stern and shaky. “Or send me your location; I’ll come to you.”

And then the line went dead.

He endured a moment of sheer, paralysing panic. In his mind’s eye, he could see the television displaying the morning news. On the screen, a sombre-faced reporter spoke of a missing girl, the daughter of the infamous businessman. She had made one final call in the early hours of the morning, her last known contact with the world.

Mercifully, the moment of panic was just that: a moment. Because soon after the line went dead, Abdul received a notification that Veronica was sharing her location with him. Almost overcome with relief, Abdul clocked the location—a suburban street in Staten Island—groaned inwardly and sent her a message saying he was on his way. It would take at least 40 minutes for him to drive from his apartment in Queens to Veronica’s location. He fervently hoped she stayed put and out of trouble until he could reach her.

Moving swiftly, Abdul jammed a pair of old trainers on his feet and threw on his trusty, old winter coat. Then he grabbed his keys off a hook on the wall and checked his coat pocket to confirm that his wallet was still in there. Thankfully, it was. Abdul didn’t bother turning the lights on as he moved through the apartment. He didn’t want to wake his flatmate and besides, he didn’t need the light. He could navigate his way in the dark and did so silently, the only sound being the soft click of the latch as he closed the front door.

Outside his apartment, Abdul forewent the lift, all too conscious of its unreliability, and took the stairs down at a jog. The stairwell was bitterly cold, a precursor to the frigidness of the weather outside, and he found himself regretting his decision not to pull on a sweater or put on a proper pair of pants. Under his coat, he was wearing only a long-sleeved shirt and pair of flannelette pyjama pants. It was too late to go back now anyway. All things going well, he wouldn’t need to be out of his car for very long. Maybe not at all.

At 2:58am, precisely 15 minutes after the call, Abdul emerged onto the street. Outside, in the world, the cold hurt. It hurt his lungs, his face, the exposed skin of his throat and chest. It left him breathless and barely functional. Stiffly, he shuffled outside his apartment and to his 2004 Dodge Intrepid, an old creature of muted red paint and unexpected reliability that his little brother had, inexplicably, named Jenkins. The key fob had stopped working years ago, and he was forced to open it manually, his hands clumsy from the cold. The inside of his car was marginally warmer than outside and smelled of stale McDonalds, a reminder of the last thing he’d eaten in his car, a free Big Mac courtesy of the Monopoly promotion. A real boon for sure.

Shivering, his teeth starting to chatter, Abdul started the car and pulled out onto the road, one hand on the steering wheel and the other shoved between his thighs, trying to stay as warm as possible. He had maps up on his phone and the device propped in the ashtray, the screen visible for when he needed to navigate the utterly unfamiliar backstreets of Staten Island suburbia. For now, he was fine. Abdul would keep to the main roads and arterial highways, taking the most direct route, all the while reminding himself to calculate his tolls in the light of day when this nightmare was well and truly over.

The drive was a quiet one. Abdul kept the radio off and the heater on. The latter let out a grinding, laborious whirr and a dishearteningly pitiful trickle of hot air. Nonetheless, the interior of the car got warmer, to Abdul’s immense relief. He was travelling five miles above the speed limit and wanted to go faster, but knew the risk of being pulled over was too great and grave. If he wanted to get Veronica home in one piece, he needed to get there in one piece.

So he sped a little but not a lot, and listened carefully for a call or text message from Veronica. He expected her to text him asking where he was and demanding that he hurry up. But she didn’t. She didn’t and Abdul’s worry deepened, manifesting as a sick, caustic simmer at the pit of his stomach. Meanwhile, his mind fretted over the plight of drunk and vulnerable young women at parties. He had heard the stories. Tales of women waking up between unfamiliar sheets with no recollection of how they had gotten there. Stories of broken girls, drugged girls, lost girls, dead girls. So many stories. So much to consider as he drove to Veronica, one hand clenched on the steering wheel, white knuckles straining against brown skin, his lips pressed firmly together, a bloodless slash across his worried face.

After just over half an hour, he was on the island and crawling through suburban streets, bathed in the combined illumination of streetlights and the waxing moon. In daylight, he struggled to read the numbers of houses even with the help of his hefty prescription, and in darkness it was pretty much impossible. Instead, he drove very slowly, his gaze flicking to the phone propped up in the ashtray, the distance decreasing with each slow rotation of Jenkins’ wheels. Eventually, he heard the unmistakeable sound of heavy bass, a muted throb and thump that seemed to rattle the road and roof of the car with its resonance.

Soon enough, he saw the lit windows of a house a block ahead that appeared to be the source of the music. It was the only house still illuminated, situated on a large block of land surrounded by trees. Abdul thought he saw spruce and oak, the latter of which hung skeletally over the house, its leafless branches stretched around the structure as if frozen in the act of embrace. It looked creepy, something you’d be more likely to see in Sleepy Hollow than Staten Island suburbia, and the house itself added to the effect. It was large and clearly expensive, yet touched by signs of neglect and destruction. The front lawn was overgrown and a peppered with a few old cars, each crusted with corrosion and in various states of disrepair. One seemed to be missing an engine, another rested on cinderblocks and an old van leaned to one side, stripped of all its doors. The railing on the front porch was splintered and broken, as if someone had lost their temper and kicked the shit out of it, and one of the windows on the second story was cracked and repaired with duck tape.

With a mixture of derision and dread, Abdul peered at the cursed house as he crawled by in Jenkins, his phone confirming that he had reached his destination. Out of necessity, he parked two houses up. He would’ve parked right out front if he could. Of course, that was made impossible by the cars the crowded around the house. There were two Land Rovers, a Tesla, an old BMW and a bright blue Lamborghini that would easily pay for the entirety of his college tuition and then some. _Rich people_ , he thought bitterly as approached the house, wrapping his coat around his body and briskly picking his way through the long grass, taking care to avoid the rusty car parts interspersed amongst the lawn, which were no doubt ready to give the gift of tetanus to anyone unfortunate enough to step on them.

The porch light flickered on and off as Abdul approached, a single, naked bulb intermittently illuminating piles of empty cans and bottles, playing cards and splinters of wood scattered across the porch. To his right, amongst the detritus, Abdul made out a couch covered in bags, blankets and old newspapers pushed up against one wall of the house and, to this left, a couple of deckchairs, one of which was speckled with what looked like blood…or possibly ketchup. Abdul couldn’t tell in the grim and haphazard discotheque of the porch. 

“So fucking grubby,” he murmured to himself, his breathe visible in the icy air, and even to his own ears, he heard the dismay and concern in his voice. Because this was not Veronica’s scene. Growing up as she had, if there was one thing you could say about her, it was that she had certain “standards”. Standards that dictated her life, sometimes with impossible rigidity. Standards that had her attending fancy functions with Upper East “high society”: actors, performers, politicians, wealthy businesspeople and their respective entourages of sycophantic socialites and professional limpets. Standards that had her exercising zealously before a big event, if only she could fit into the expensive dress her mother had intentionally bought one size too small.Standards that counselled her from having more than a couple of drinks in the company of those her father wished to impress. Standards that meant her small acts of rebellion were just that: small.

In that context, Veronica’s attendance at this shitty house party was completely out of character.Rightly or wrongly, the Veronica he knew would consider such a party well below those impossibly high “standards”. Feeling more troubled than before, Abdul thumbed his iPhone open to call Veronica so that they could get the fuck out of this shitty place, when the front door of the porch creaked open. Smoke curled from the interior of the house and the music increased in volume, enough that Abdul could almost discern the song that was playing. Startled, he stepped back just as a skinny, shirtless boy stepped out of the house.

“Hey, dude,” the boy greeted in a slurred voice, a tangled mop of bleached hair falling over one eye, his face gaunt in the scant light. He wore only a pair of ripped jeans and dirty sneakers. Across his bare chest, a tattoo implored Abdul to _Name Me_ in curving script. “You got the stuff?” he asked, his gaze glassy and unfocussed, and proceeded to pull a wad of $50 notes from his jeans. “We appreciate you, y’know, makin’ the trip, bro. Like, you’re doing us a real solid.”

“I’m not—” Abdul began, finally finding his voice as he realised the implication of the guy’s question, “—here for that,” he finished, but the young man wasn’t listening. He was too busy counting out the notes, his hands moving with a deliberate slowness that seemed to suggest that the task required a stupendous degree of concentration. And it all seemed so very strange—that moment, the stranger and the flickering porch light—so much so that Abdul felt himself awash with a sensation of utter and unparalleled surreality. Because it was 3:30am in the morning and he was standing in his pyjamas outside a house in Staten Island trying to convince a perfect stranger that he was not the drug dealer he had been expecting.

“Mate,” he spoke louder his time, his voice firm. “You don’t need to do that. I’m not here for that. I’m actually here to to pick up a friend.”

The young man looked up, an expression of puzzlement gracing his face and making him seem so much younger than Abdul had first thought. He had initially guessed his age at mid twenties, but now he wondered if he wasn’t in his late teens, if not younger. The stranger looked childlike in the guttering porch light and, with the smoke curling from the house behind him, almost otherworldly, as if he had stepped from the pages of graphic novel into real life.

“I’m picking up a friend,” Abdul repeated, searching for understanding in the stranger’s face and seeing only a dull, guileless bemusement. “Veronica Lodge?” he queried, studying his expression closely for any trace of recognition. “She was here. At this party. Look, just let me call her then,” he suggested, more to himself than anyone else, and did just that, turning his back slightly on the young man to allow himself a pretence of privacy.

“Y’know we’re good for it, bro,” the young man started to speak just as Abdul heard the telltale buzz of a phone ringing. “Look, I’ve got the money right here—”

“Be quiet!” he hissed, moving his free hand in a downwards motion, as if the gesture could turn down the volume on the wasted stranger standing on the threshold of the house, and mercifully, the boy shut up. Now Abdul could hear the vibration more clearly. It wasn’t coming from inside the house. Rather, it was coming from the porch. But that didn’t make sense. The porch was empty save for the trash, the vacant deckchairs and the blankets and bags heaped up the couch to his right. Although, now that he studied the couch more closely, he thought he could see something under the blankets, a mass of dark hair, the outline of a figure.

“Veronica?” Abdul ventured in a soft, hesitant voice. Gingerly, he took one step forward. Somewhere, in the background, the wasted kid was still talking to him, but his words were inaudible. His words were inaudible and so was everything else. Abdul couldn’t hear music anymore. The bass had ceased, along with the wind and the noise of distant traffic. He heard only the throb of his own heart, his laboured breaths and the vibration of a phone, a persistent buzz that drew him ever closer to the hidden figure beneath the blanket.

Abdul took another step forward. Three steps. Four. And then he was carefully peeling back the blanket on the old couch to reveal the comma-shaped curl of Veronica Lodge. She was holding aduffel bag to her chest and her eyes were closed. Her hair was tangled and unruly, forming a halo of darkness about her face, and the lavender dress she was wearing had rode up, exposing her thighs and the elastic of her underwear stretched across her hip, a web of delicate white lace against brown skin. At first glance, in repose, Veronica’s face was soft and relaxed, almost peaceful. Then the light flickered and when Abdul saw her again, he saw only her exhaustion. He saw in the dark smudges beneath her eyes and the slack cast to her mouth. She was drooling a little. She was fast asleep. She was so very small and, it seemed to Abdul, incredibly fragile. He was scared to touch her.

“Woah, fuck, so that’s where she went…”

Abdul turned on the shirtless young man behind him, who was now peering at Veronica with a grin on his face. “Excuse me?” he prompted, his voice cold.

“She disappeared,” the kid murmured, his smile fading in the face of Abdul’s steely expression. “Here one moment and gone the next. It was spooky.”

“I’m taking her home,” Abdul replied in a brusque voice, turning back to his sleeping friend. Part of him wanted to ask the wasted guy whether anything had been done to Veronica, or if he knew what drugs she’d taken. The other part of him wanted only to escape. He doubted he’d get a straight answer from the kid anyway. Besides, Veronica seemed fine. She was fully clothed and fast asleep, holding her bag to her chest. “You can go back inside now,” he added over his shoulder, “I’m not your dealer, but I’m sure he’s on his way.”

Of course, he could not be sure of that fact. In any case, it seemed to do the trick. A moment later he heard a soft, “Whatever,” followed by the click of the front door and the sound of receding footsteps. Relieved and now alone, Abdul studied Veronica for a moment, observing the oversized knitted jumper pulled over what seemed to be a party dress, the platform heels she was still wearing and the lit screen of her vibrating phone, wedged between her body and the duffel bag. Carefully, he reached over, picked up the phone, hung up on himself and slipped it into one of the pockets of his large coat. Then he lightly grasped her arm and shook her slightly.

“Wake up, Vee. It’s Abdul. You called and now, well, I’m here now.”

“Hmm?” she mumbled blearily, prompting Abdul’s feeling of relief to swell. She was responsive. That was something.

“You need to wake up, Veronica,” he insisted, shaking her again, and his voice sounded lighter to his own ears—lighter and less strained. “I’m here to take you home.”

She shifted, stretched a little and blinked up at him. In doing so, she dislodged a dusty tartan rug and a couple of newspapers from the pile heaped on the couch. Something else too that had fallen onto the wooden deck, a small expensive-looking bag. It looked a little like a deluxe lunchbox with a handle and a zipper to open the lid.

“That’s mine,” she murmured, sitting up slightly, her face a stencil of the creases and the pattern of the fabric upon which she had been sleeping. “Th—there’s also, um, another big bag behind…it’s behind the couch, I think. ‘Cause I, um, had it in the bathroom but, y’know, uh…” Veronica continued, her words falling over and into one another. She was sitting up now with a truly horrific case of bedhead, and Abdul might’ve laughed at the sight of her, but somehow it wasn’t funny. It was the way she was speaking, as if she had some sort of impairment, and then there were her eyes, pupils so dilated that Abdul could not make out the lovely brown of her irises.

“You’ve got your duffel bag,” he said slowly, as if he were speaking to a distressed child. “I’ve got this one,” he held up the smaller bag that had tumbled out of the heap of blankets. “And there’s something behind the couch, is that right?” he asked quietly, choosing not to wonder at the peculiarity of Veronica bringing so many bags to a house party.

She nodded quickly in reply, her teeth starting to chatter, and said, “I hid it ‘c-cause I thought they might steal it.”

“Fair enough.” Abdul smiled reassuringly as he leaned over Veronica to reach behind the couch. He felt the handle of a bag almost immediately and pulled, surprised by the weight. What emerged was a large rectangle piece of luggage with a rigid cover and wheels—something you’d take to the airport on a long trip, not to a party. Bemused, he placed the bag down next to the couch and looked to Veronica for confirmation.

“Mine too,” she said with a strange, shaky smile.

“Great,” he replied, trying to return her smile and coming up short with what he suspected was a pained grimace. Not that it mattered; in the state she was in, there was no chance she would notice anyway. “Is that it?” he asked and again, she nodded. “Do you need help getting to my car?” Veronica shook her head this time, and sat up fully, sliding off her heels and looping them around his wrist.

Seeing this and thinking of the lawn strewn with rusty car parts, Abdul contemplated telling Veronica to put her shoes back on. Instead, he told her to stay put, grabbed the bags, quickly ran them across the hazardous lawn and dropped them off on the sidewalk. He returned to Veronica a moment later and offered a piggy back. Giggling, sounding a little unhinged, she climbed onto his back and slung her arms around his neck in too-loose embrace. He told her to hold on tighter and she complied, yet her body seemed to lack an essential sort of tension, as if she’d lost control of her limbs. It worried him. That and the fact that she was so damn cold. Where the exposed parts of his skin met hers, the chill of her flesh was such that his own burned. It made Abdul wonder how long she’d lain there outside on the porch, curled up beneath a blanket and not much else.

Not trusting her legs to carry her, Abdul took Veronica all the way to the car. He placed her in the passenger side, tucked in her legs and clipped in her seatbelt. This particular sequence of actions invoked a strange sense of déjà vu in Abdul. In his mind’s eye, he could see his kid-self easing his younger siblings into their baby boosters before his family of eight embarked on the epic car trip from New York to Indianapolis in their notoriously unreliable Honda Odyssey. He used the same technique on Veronica now and took the same level of care.

But of course, this was different. The booster was gone. It was gone because Veronica wasn’t one of his little sisters. She was an adult and he was too. Also, Abdul’s family had only ever travelled in the summer months and usually left right after dawn, allowing enough time to glimpse the sunrise as they trundled along in the old minivan. As such, he associated those memories with warmth, the thrill of adventure and the soft, almost syrupy light of the dawn sun—all of which were far cry from what he was currently experiencing. Right now, it was bitterly cold and the sun seemed a very distant thing, less real and more like something of myth or memory.

Getting down on his haunches, Abdul peered at Veronica, slumped in passenger seat. “Are you okay?” he asked softly, adjusting the tartan blanket he’d stolen from the porch over her body. “Do you need anything before we leave?”

She shook her head. By the dim interior light of his car, Abdul saw that the manic mirth had left her expression. She wasn’t laughing anymore. Instead, her face had gone slack and empty. She was looking in his direction, but did not perceive him. Instead, her dark eyes held only an abstract vacancy.

“Vee?” he asked, his voice hitching. Panicked, he gave her knee a little shake. “You still with me?”

A lengthy pause and then she spoke, her voice a dull murmur, “Yes.” A moment later, her eyes found his own and the unsettling vacancy in her expression ebbed, animation returning by degrees. First annoyance, then weariness. An exhausted marionette reluctantly come to life. “What are we waiting for?” she asked,“Let’s get out of here.”

The trip back was cold and uneventful. Veronica curled up in the passenger seat, her eyes closed. Abdul couldn’t tell if she actually asleep or just pretending to be so she didn’t have to speak to him. He didn’t press her. If she had been awake and responsive, he might’ve asked whether she wanted to be dropped off at her mum’s house. Veronica had mentioned that she lived around here. As it was, he decided that it was better to simply take her back to his flat. Veronica could crash in his room and then, in the morning, she’d be back to her normal self. She would begrudgingly apologise (Abdul had learned that Veronica wasn’t the greatest at saying sorry) and take him out for breakfast. And if he was feeling brave, Abdul might ask that she be more careful in future. He might tell her how much she had scared him.

It took two trips for Abdul to get Veronica and her assortment of bags up to his apartment. He used the lift this time and to his relief, it worked. By the time he returned from his second trip, Veronica was already in his bed, fast asleep. The cover were pulled past her chin, partially obscuring her face, her mane of wavy dark hair spilling over his light grey bedspread. Smiling softly at the sight of her, a weight easing off his chest, Abdul lay down on the bed beside her, intending to keep an eye on her for half an hour or so. Just long enough to make sure she was okay.

Minutes or hours later, he awoke to a crash and the unmistakeable sound of gagging. Startled and disorientated, he sat up in the pre-dawn dimness and fumbled on his glasses. Beside him, he saw his rumpled bedsheets and duvet, but no Veronica. At the sight of the empty bed, panic bloomed in his chest and, fleetingly, he wondered if he had dreamed the drive out to Staten Island to pick Veronica up. It was surreal enough to be a dream. Perhaps he had taken the call, fallen asleep and dreamed the rest of it: the dilapidated house, empty-eyed boy and Veronica cradled in the embrace of those old blankets, her skin as cold as ice.

Then he heard it again. A gag following by a hoarse cough and agonised groan. Peering over the side of the bed, Abdul saw Veronica on her hands and knees dressed in the same outfit from last night, her hair a dark curtain obscuring her face. A moment later the smell reached him—the acrid and earthy stench of vomit. His stomach turning, Abdul forced himself to breathe through his mouth as he scrambled off his bed and squatted down next to Veronica. Up close, he could see that she had used one of his old t-shirts to catch most of the vomit, which seemed to be mostly bile and red wine. _A bona fide party girl cocktail_ , he thought tiredly as he placed a gentle hand on Veronica’s contorted back, feeling the tension in her body.

“Let’s get you to the bathroom, okay?” Abdul reached out to push to one side the curtain of hair covering Veronica’s face. Trying for levity, he murmured, “You’re looking a little green, love.”

“I’m sorry,” she muttered in a miserable voice. “Fuck, I… Jesus, Abdul. I’ve ruined your shirt and your carpet, fuck, I’m so—”

“It’s all good. Nothing a little stain remover won’t get out.” Abdul wasn’t entirely sure of that fact (the carpet was looking pretty grim), but figured now wasn’t the time to say. “C’mon. Let’s go to the bathroom. I can show you the new toilet seat. You’ll love it.”

Veronica spewed at least three more times in the bathroom, her hands clenched white-knuckled on the rim of toilet bowl. By the third time, there was nothing left to vomit. She heaved and coughed and spat out the thin stream of wine-coloured bile that dribbled from her mouth into the toilet. By that time, Abdul had put her hair up in a messy ponytail with a hairband left behind by his flatmate’s girlfriend and had one hand on her back, resting there in what he hoped was a reassuring, and not totally annoying, gesture.

By the stark fluorescent light of the bathroom, Abdul saw the details he had overlooked in the dark. Veronica’s knees were scraped and marred with the deep, soft purple of new bruises. Her legs were remarkably thin and tangled beneath her, sprawled crookedly on the bathroom floor. Seeing her like this, Abdul realised she had lost weight. Her shoulder blades jutted under the knitted jumper she wore over her cocktail dress and her wrists were so very fine and slender. She looked very fragile and a little pathetic, hunched as she was over the toilet bowl, and Abdul had to force himself not to turn away. He felt the undeniable urge to give her some privacy. Because there was something naked about Veronica in this moment. A rawness that scared him a little. All pretence and poise stripped away to reveal something that was small and scared and very uncertain.

Eventually, Veronica turned away from the toilet, leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes. Giving her space, Abdul shuffled over to the other side of the bathroom, remaining seated on the floor with his arms wrapped loosely around his knees. From his vantage point, he watched her, waiting patiently and eventually, her eyes opened blearily and she met his gaze. And for a time, they did not speak, just watched each other, the bathroom awash with the cold light of the fluorescent broken only by the warm tendrils of sunlight that wove through the high, small windowabove the shower.

“What a night, eh?” Veronica eventually broke the silence, her mouth curving into a crooked, half-hearted grin.

“What happened, Vee?” He did not smile and his dark eyes were serious. They had come too far now to revert to empty, humorous small talk.

“Well.” She sighed wearily and gave small careless shrug, as if someone had pulled her strings, just once, and then let go. “You were right, for one.”

“Right about what?”

She shook her head, her eyes filling with unshed tears and murmured, “About a lot of things actually, but specifically about, ah, Emily.” Unconsciously, she started to wring her hands in her lap, fingers digging ruthlessly into the palms of her hands, her thumb testing the ridges of her knuckles. “Turns out she definitely doesn’t love me—” She left out a harsh chuckle before continuing, “—and, er, possibly, well, probably doesn’t like me all that much either.”

“Did someone find out?” he asked quietly.

Veronica nodded and swallowed hard. Then, in a voice so soft he had to strain to hear her, she said, “It was very very bad, Abdul. Very bad. Her, ah, her daughter found photos on Emily’s work phone. Photos of me.” She squirmed a little, as if physically pained by the retelling, and a tear slipped down her cheek. “You can guess what kind of photos they were.”

He could and felt a little sick at the realisation.

“What happened?”

“A lot. All bad.” Her voice shook as a haunted expression found its way into her face. “Her daughter sent them to Emily’s husband and her friends. Her boss.” Veronica visibly winced and bit her lip, her front teeth grinding the soft flesh. “She also sent them to my mom.” Abdul inhaled sharply and Veronica nodded, acknowledging his response. “I didn’t expect…” she trailed off momentarily, her gaze losing focus as another tear trickled down her face. “I didn’t expect her reaction. I’ve never seen her that…cruel. I always knew with my dad… With his mean streak and all but, but my mom I just…” Veronica let out a shaky breath and continued, her words careful and deliberate. “Turns out she’s more…traditionally minded than I thought.”

“I see.” And Abdul did. His father was the same.

“I might need somewhere to stay,” she said weakly and it finally clicked for Abdul. All the bags. He guessed it was most of what she owned.

“Of course,” he said simply, pushing to the side his worries about three people living in his tiny apartment and how he might explain this to his flatmate. “As long as you need. Veronica,” he began, knowing there was more to the story, “have you spoken to Emily? Y’know, since it happened.”

She nodded. “The first time, the day after. Emily was brusque and businesslike. Said it was over, that I should stop contacting her and that she was—“ Veronica made air quotes. “—‘handling it’. I didn’t think she meant it, not really. I figured she was lying low what with everything that had happened. I thought maybe she wanted me to lay low too. Y’know, leave her alone for a week or so. Definitely not forever… Thing is, we’d only just seen each other the day before. We spent the whole day together, Abdul, having great sex, but it wasn’t just that. It really wasn’t,” she said earnestly, leaning forward, as if she were trying to convince him of this fact. “Most of the time, we lay in each other’s arms, just talking or watching cheesy daytime soaps. I told her…” Veronica looked a little bashful, her cheeks reddening slightly, but continued nonetheless. “I told her I couldn’t imagine life without her. And she said…she said I didn’t have to.”

Abdul nodded in understanding, although he didn’t really get it. He did not understand how Veronica had fallen under the thrall of someone who so obviously did not care about her. Never mind Emily’s postcoital, spur-of-the-moment profession of adoration. What about all those moments in which Emily had been careless, callous and incredibly selfish? Abdul had heard enough stories to make up his mind. There were the late night booty calls in which Emily woke Veronica up to demand she get a Uber across town to meet her and, of course, those weeks when Emily was MIA, during which Veronica would wait anxiously by the phone until her lover deigned to contact her. Veronica was skilled at putting a romantic slant on these incidents. She would insist that she loved Emily’s spontaneity and that absence made the heart grow fonder, but Abdul saw clearly through the bullshit. Everything was on Emily’s time and terms. Veronicawas nothing more than a hapless passenger.

“So,” he began, choosing not to comment on Emily’s apparent devotion, “how long did you wait to call again?”

“6 days. But, ah, she didn’t answer. So I called a bunch of times, sent her messages and even left a couple of voicemails.”

“You hate voicemails.” Veronica had told Abdul before that voicemails were for lazy boomers who couldn’t be bothered condensing their thoughts into text. On principle, she made a point of never listening to any that she received. “You must’ve been desperate.”

“I was,” she said softly. In the dawn sunlight, her face was drawn with grief, almost gaunt, and her makeup was smudged: her lipstick had nearly rubbed off, dying the skin around her mouth a muted red, and there was a smear of eyeliner from the corner of her left eye down to the curve of her cheek. “I needed to know.”

“I see,” Abdul murmured in a low voice, matching her volume for reasons unknown. “And what did she say when you spoke to her?”

Veronica tried to smile, a half-hearted quirk of her lips, before her chin trembled. “She, ah… I…” Her voice wavered, broke and faded into silence. Wordless, she gave a helpless shrug, swallowed hard and gripped her thighs, nails digging into the soft skin. Fleetingly, the young woman seemed to fight with something inside herself. The strain was evident on her tortured face, stiff posture and the pale crescents stencilled into brown skin. “It was, ah…” she began again, words thick with emotion, and then her face twisted with anguish, and something seemed to crack open inside her.

Abdul reached out to her, leaning forward. “Vee…”

“Don’t,” she whispered harshly, drawing in a shaky, effortful breath and holding up one hand as if to ward him away. “Don’t you dare fucking be nice to me. Not right now. I c-can’t take it, Abdul.”

“You deserve so much better,” he blurted because it was the truth and he couldn’t help himself. Like Veronica, his voice was shaking. It was part sorrow and part fury. Sorrow for Veronica. Fury at the person who had done this to her. “You do. If you could just see—”

“That’s not true,” Veronica wrenched the words from her chest, like she couldn’t bear to hold them inside her a moment longer. And then she was crying, sobbing hard and stumbling brokenly through her sentences. “She’s so much better than me, way _way_ out of my league…and I should’ve known…I…I should’ve known that. I j-just thought that maybe…maybe she loved me too.” Veronica let out a tight gasp and rested her head on the tiled wall, closing her eyes against the stray beam of lambent sunlight that drew her countenance into startling clarity: the pained twist to her lips, her wobbly chin and those tears that fell freely down her swollen cheeks.

“Veronica…” Abdul said hoarsely, his throat suddenly tight and sore. “Don’t say that shit. Don’t—”

“Y’know I kinda fucking hate myself, Abdul,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken, her face a rictus of pain, her body tense, wound tight as a spring. “I do and I mean, that’s nothing new, but _fuck_ , it’s, like, usually not this unbearable. I can usually live with it. With myself. It just that…” Veronica gulped, her throat visibly working, and let out a tremulous, effortful breath. “I felt alive with her. Like the world was brighter, louder, more vivid when she was around. And like I was a part of it. A good part. I…I know it’s pathetic…”

Wordlessly, Abdul reached out and placed one hand on the skin just above the ankle of Veronica’s outstretched leg, the dark skin of his hand contrasting with the paler brown of her calf. He squeezed softly, hoping to convey reassurance, before speaking in a soft voice. “It’s not, Veronica. It sounds very…” he paused, looking for the right word. “It sounds very human to me.”

Veronica let out a huff, an exhalation that was part chuckle part sigh. “Well, it sucks,” she proclaimed thickly, a wry and watery grin breaking through her misery on her face. “All of it. Dealing with humans, being human. I give it a 2 out of 10, and that’s being generous.”

“It’ll get better, Veronica,” he said quietly, still holding onto her, his gaze holding hers. Inwardly, something she had said niggled at him—the part about hating herself. It just didn’t make sense, and had him caught between dismay and disbelief. Because Veronica was bold and confident and downright intimidating when she wanted to be. She was spunk and steel, just like his mother said. Granted, Emily had knocked her down a peg or two, and some wounds were to be expected, but that still didn’t explain it, for Veronica had characterised Emily as the cure, not the cause, which meant that she had felt that way before Emily, perhaps for a very long time.

“I can’t believe that, Abdul,” she replied tiredly, drawing him out of his thoughts. “I’ve gone and blown up my whole fucking life. Nothing will be the same again. Everything, _everything_ is in tatters.”

“Then you’ll build yourself a new one. One that fits you better and where you call the shots. And it won’t be easy, but it’ll be good. It’ll be so lovely, Veronica.” Abdul was still holding lightly onto her ankle, leaning across the bathroom. It was an awkward position and his back was hurting, but for some unfathomable reason he couldn’t quite bring himself to let her go. It felt right in that moment, to hold on. “Trust me.”

Taking in a long, shaky breath of air, Veronica closed her eyes and nodded, fresh tears slipping down her cheeks. “You’ll…” she began, paused and cleared her throat. “You’ll, um, stick around to see it, won’t you? The so-called lovely part.”

She sounded so very small, like a frightened kid, and something broke in him a little. “Definitely,” Abdul said, his voice gentle and rough with emotion. “Someone needs to be around to say ‘I told you so’.”

At that, his friend let out a short, brittle laugh and reclined her head back against the bathroom wall, her eyes still closed, sunlight spilling over her stricken face. Sitting there, a tangle of loose limbs and dark hair, all sharp angles sans softness, Veronica Lodge looked a little surreal, like a piece of art her rich and self-obsessed family might hang on a wall and only pretend to understand.

When her laughter faded, silence swept in and swallowed the scene. And for a moment, Abdul could almost imagine the two of them captured in the confines of a picture frame, frozen in time and space in his poky little bathroom, trapped in a moment in which the sun would always be shining like it was 6:30am and Veronica would always be crying and Abdul might hold onto her for an eternity and then some, his body stretched across the scant space, his hand a small and steady anchor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: it's been v long since I updated. Life always seems to get in the way. This chapter is pretty long, despite my stern words to myself to keep them shorter. I guess I am a sucker for long-form writing and character development (hopefully not at the expense of my audience's experience/enjoyment). Also, I get that this chapter a bit sad and wanted to say here that it will absolutely get a touch lighter from here on out. Thanks for reading.

**Author's Note:**

> I've decided to dabble in ff again. I hope you like it. Also, I've never really used this platform before, so please let me know if I've done something daft.


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